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An excavator is a powerful tool. You’ll find it on a wide variety of construction sites, landscaping projects and demolition areas. Typically, it allows for powerful digging into the ground, clearing the way for whatever you’re working on. With the help of attachments, however, your excavator can become any number of additional tools, like a jackhammer, a clamp, a mower and more.

Attachments can open up a new world for your excavator, allowing you to do more with a single machine. You can save money and improve efficiency at the same time. You can find many of these options available as both standard and compact excavator attachments. Keep reading to learn about the different types of excavator work tools you can use and which attachments might be best for your mini excavator.

TYPES OF EXCAVATOR ATTACHMENTS
The types of excavator attachments available genuinely run the gamut. You can find attachments for compact excavators, crawler excavators and more. Nearly all of them offer quick-attach mounting hardware, so you can swap tools as needed. Here are some of the best excavator attachments for a wide variety of jobs.

1. AUGERS
excavator auger attachmentAugers are excavator digger attachments that help you penetrate deep into the ground. They have a spiral design that transports the dug soil out of the hole as it goes. They are common on residential projects and are often used for drilling holes for pillars and planting trees and shrubbery.

There are many different options for augers, as they are a versatile tool. You can find mounting brackets that include single-pin hitch, double-pin hitch or a double-pin cradle hitch. These let you swap out attachments quickly. You can also find different power options, such as direct-drive and gear-driven augers. Direct-drive augers provide better balance and speed, but gear-driven is best for applications that require a lot of torque.

2. BUCKETS

Buckets are usually constructed from hard steel and feature teeth on the digging edge to help with penetration, though lightweight buckets might lack teeth. Heavy-duty buckets might need tungsten teeth to get through tougher materials. You can find different types of excavator buckets, such as:

·Standard or digging: For light materials such as sand and loose dirt. This is the all-purpose bucket that typically comes with an excavator.

·Heavy: For higher-density materials. This bucket attachment is used for grading and leveling.

·Severe: For tougher materials like rock and clay
·Narrow: For additional force and maneuverability in some environments
·Trenching: For creating trenches
·Skeleton: For spading and sieving
·Grading bucket: For cleaning an area and leveling the ground
·V bucket: For digging  V-shaped trenches and laying pipes thanks to its narrow edge.

3. HAMMER
excavator hammer attachmentIf you need to break up a large swath of material, like stone or a slab of concrete, you can turn to the hammer attachment. It may also be called a breaker or hammer-breaker and works like a big jackhammer, using high impact to break up the material. You’ll have a few options in terms of hammer shape, and selecting the best one depends on the characteristics of the material you’re working with. Some of the different types of hammer attachments include the following:

·Moil: For trenching and demolition, especially rebarred concrete and trenching
·Chisel: For demolition and concrete excavation, where penetration is necessary with the angled tip.
·Blunt: For crushing operations, as it transfers high impact over a larger surface area.
A hammer attachment can vary in size, depending on your scale and what you’re breaking.

4. GRAPPLE
excavator grapple attachementA grapple is one of the more common excavator attachments for forestry work, but you can also find it in demolition, construction, waste handling and more. It uses two large, curved clamps to grab onto materials, often oddly shaped or irregular. One kind of grapple allows you to move both sides, while the other can only move one side. For either type, the grapple is usually controlled by hydraulics, which allows you to adjust the angle and rotation of the tool.

5.RIPPER

A ripper is a straightforward-shaped tool with a pointed end that enables you to rip through the hard ground or frozen surfaces with powerful force. It can help you rip up earth and scarify it, as well as remove embedded items like stumps and root systems.

6. RAKES
excavator rake attachement When you need to clear brush or other debris at a job site, a rake attachment can help you do so quickly and easily. A beneficial feature of the Cat rake tools is that their three-, four- and five-tine shapes collect debris and leave the dirt behind. Whether you’re clearing brush, tree branches or anything else, these rakes help you save time and increase efficiency. Both tine-only and grapple rakes are available to outfit your mini excavator for various forestry applications.

MINI EXCAVATOR QUICK COUPLERS FOR EASY ATTACHMENT
Understanding what tools will work best for your application is just the start — you need a way to switch between them easily. With a quick coupler, you can exchange work tools efficiently and maintain productivity. Our SDJK quick couplers are designed with convenience in mind, and they fit both SDJK attachments and those from many other brands to ensure you can use any work tool you need for your specialized applications. The wedge-style locking system attaches the coupler to your excavator securely.

The operator unlocks a quick coupler from inside the cab to detach one tool. They can then attach a new accessory by lining it up with the quick coupler and locking it into place. Using a quick coupler can save time and maximize productivity because your operators can switch between attachments seamlessly and get right back to work.

COMPLETE YOUR EXCAVATION TOOL COLLECTION WITH SDJK QUICK COUPLERS
If you want to make your excavator do double-, triple- or quadruple-duty as multiple tools in your arsenal, try different types of attachments. We have a wide array of excavating tools to help you with everything from forestry and construction to demolition and landscaping.

Our high-quality attachments are priced competitively, and we’ll do everything we can to get them to you quickly to help you stay productive on the work site. We also offer maintenance and repair services for machines and attachments, as well as expert guidance on how you can get the most out of your mini excavator and its work tools.