Flat floor or fabricated floor?
4-in-1 buckets have been the bucket of choice for skid steer loaders and mini loaders in the Australian market for over 30 years. One of the biggest changes in the design of these buckets is the solid floor but is it a benefit to you?
Most 4-in-1 buckets now feature a solid single piece of steel as the base plate. In days gone by the floor was fabricated from multiple pieces of steel generally with a “hump” in the centre of the floor, so why has the design changed?
Solid steel floors are generally much stronger. The materials used in the floor are hardened and tempered steel, commonly bisalloy or hardox are used at a thickness from 12mm – 20mm. It is much less likely for the floor of the bucket to bend and bow out which was a common problem on fabricated floors.
The other reason is that it is easier to empty the bucket completely. Flat floors allow the material slide out of the bucket without any friction, the raised hump in the floor has a habit to trap material.
Flat floor buckets do however have one downside which is the weight. Generally they will weight more than a bucket with a fabricated floor. If the host machine is low on lift capacity than the bucket can be too heavy to be filled and raised safely (depending on the material). Thankfully many modern machines are designed with this in mind and feature much higher lift capacities than the models they have superseded.