Types of Excavator Buckets

Choose Your Excavator Buckets/ Digging Buckets / Rock Buckets / Rock Buckets / Skeleton Buckets /Utility Buckets / Ditch Cleaning Buckets ...

The construction industry is a growing and changing field, where having the correct equipment for the job is essential. So, choosing the appropriate excavator bucket for your projects are necessary to tackle the job and the type of material you are working with.

The excavator attachment industry is constantly growing and changing to keep up with the needs and demands of the operators in it. There are now a huge selection of different types of buckets, so you might not know where to start if you’re new or just looking to try something else. We have complied a list of Types of Excavator Buckets and what we believe are their best uses.

Our steel suppliers deliver full-size edges and bars that measure over 7.7 metres in length, so we can provide plenty of flexibility when it comes to cutting blades at unorthodox sizes.

A large range of Excavator Buckets are available to suit all types of excavators and diggers of earth-moving machinery. Call us for pricing on your custom orders!

Digging Bucket

Digging Bucket

– Also known as a General Purpose Bucket, the Digging Bucket is the attachment you will most likely recognise. The Digging Bucket is the most common bucket provided with Excavators when sold or rented. It’s main use is for digging in construction environments as well as standard dirt in landscaping or groundworks projects – The Digging Bucket is most commonly seen with Teeth fitted, to help penetrate tougher, more compact ground. The teeth break up the material allowing you to scrape it up into the bucket to be moved or removed. – These buckets usually come in a large variety of widths to best suit the job at hand. For example: Our Mini Digging Buckets are available in 6″, 9″, 12″, 18″ and 24″ to best suit the application- whether that be digging a narrow trench or clearing a larger area.
Rock Bucket

Rock Bucket

– Although a durable bucket, the Digging Bucket may not always be the most suitable bucket for your digging job. The Rock Bucket is a more heavy duty version of the standard Digging Bucket. – Rock Buckets are reinforced with much stronger and thicker wear plates to add ‘bulk’ to the bucket and have sharper teeth than a standard Digging Bucket. These additions reinforce the bucket for use in much harsher conditions and help penetrate solid materials. The best use is the continuous breaking up of rocks and extremely abrasive, compact materials, like in a Quarry (hence the name Rock Bucket).

Tilt Ditch Cleaning Bucket

– The Tilt Ditching Bucket is exactly what the name suggests, it is a Ditch Cleaning Bucket that is able to tilt. It is the all in one solution to finishing and levelling on an angle. This bucket is manufactured with a hydraulic hook up to allow it to tilt from left to right, which provides greater flexibility when working on more complex forms and shapes, such as: levelling slopes, cleaning ditches, maintaining sloped landscaping and more. – The NBSJ Tilt Ditch Cleaning Bucket is specifically manufactured with 1 Ram to allow you to tilt 45 degrees in both directions and plugs into your standard auxiliary or hammer hydraulics making it quick and easy to attach them ready for work.

Grading / Ditch Cleaning Bucket

– This bucket is known by a wide variety of names, including: Grading Bucket, Finishing Bucket or Ditch Cleaning Bucket. The Ditch Cleaning Bucket is a wide, shallow bucket used for levelling and profiling the ground prior to further works. The low profile shell design was designed to increase the width of the bucket without increasing the weight, as not to overload your excavator. – As mentioned, these buckets are best used for finishing, particularly softer materials and aggregates like dirt. The wider shell means you are able to cover a wider distance in one motion. These buckets create a smooth finish to the material you’re profiling due to the flat edge of the bucket, as well as the flat bottom. But they can also be used for a variety of other tasks such as: cleaning ditches, loading material, back-filling and sloping. – The Ditch Cleaning Bucket is commonly fitted with a Bolt-on Blade to strengthen the lip plate and provide additional resistance, to prolong the life of your bucket. For more information on Bolt-on Blades on Ditch Cleaning Buckets, please contact us.
Utility Bucket

Utility Bucket

– The Utility Bucket is a modification of the standard Digging Bucket – it was initially created to help protect utility workers when digging near utilities as it deflects cables away from the bucket.

– The unique Blade System is an innovative design by NBSJ. It has been manufactured as a Bolt on Edge option to replace Teeth or alternative Blade Options. As well as the improved safety for utility works, the rounded, cast steel blade locks the side plates and lip plate in place, to increase the structural integrity of your bucket. It is also heat treated to 550 HB to further maximise the wear strength for continuous digging in harsh conditions.

Micro Trenching Bucket

Micro Trenching Bucket

– Also known as a Deep Dig or Fibre Optic Bucket, the Micro Trenching Bucket is a much narrower bucket than any other. It is designed for digging trenches of only a few inches wide and can usually be manufactured for a digging depth of around 15″ to 27″ deep.

– This bucket was initially designed for digging narrow trenches for the installation of Fibre Optic Cables but is now frequently used for many other applications such as: laying standard cables, pipes and irrigation.

– The main benefit of these narrower trenches is the time spent on digging, backfilling and repairing surfaces. The Micro Trenching Bucket dramatically reduces the amount of time taken to dig out the initial trench but also the amount of time spent backfilling the area you have dug out. As well as this, a large amount of money can be saved on materials usually required to repair the surface to it’s initial condition, such as concreting a sidewalk. 

Frost Bucket / Hardpan Bucket

Frost Bucket / Hardpan Bucket

– A Frost Bucket or Hardpan Bucket looks and performs similarly to a Rock Bucket but has a bonus feature…a Frost Ripper Tooth style attachment fitted to the reverse of the bucket. Depending on the manufacturers design, they might fit multiple of these Frost Ripper Teeth style features. – The purpose of these additions is to further increase the digging ability. They provide additional penetration to help break up extremely compacted grounds, where your standard Digging or Rock Bucket can’t quite cut it – helping to loosen rocks and other aggregates as the bucket curls round.
V Bucket

V Bucket

The V Bucket is a triangular shaped bucket, designed to form clean sided, sloped trenches. They are also commonly used for digging V shaped trenches used for laying pipes, cables or similar, or sloped ditches for drainage. These buckets are usually manufactured for larger excavators due to the complex design and assembly procedures required to create the trapezium shape.
Skeleton Bucket

Skeleton Bucket

– The Skeleton Bucket is also referred to as the Riddle Bucket, due to its design and structure and a Shaker Bucket due to the action required to use it. This bucket is manufactured with a slotted back and is used for separating different types of aggregates. They are mainly used on construction sites where specific materials in the ground can be removed and reused or removed and recycled. – A majority of the time it is more cost effective to separate the materials on site and have them collected or reused, rather than completely gotten rid of as mixed material / trash. These buckets are best used for removing larger items like bricks, tree roots and pipes from the finer materials like soil and smaller stone aggregates. – Besides the slotted back, Skeletons Buckets have a similar shell design to that of a Digging Bucket. This means that they are widely available, in a variety of sizes, to fit most makes of excavator.
Rake Riddle Bucket

Rake Riddle Bucket

– This bucket is a combination of your standard Land Clearance Rake Attachment and a Skeleton Bucket / Riddle Bucket. It is a shallow bucket, with a slotted back and narrow tines along the front edge of the bucket. – As the name suggest, the Rake Riddle Bucket allows you to rake through materials in the ground like tree roots or brush and then shake out the bricks and larger rocks in one movement. – The Rake Riddle Bucket can save you money. As well as the space required to store two separate attachments, you also save money on purchasing and maintaining two separate attachments. This combination bucket saves you money, time and space as you are only having to buy, maintain and store one attachment.

Clean-up Bucket

– Clean-up buckets are another type of finishing bucket that is equipped with a straight edge and long width for grading and smoothing out the surface. However, clean-up buckets have a larger carrying capacity than other finishing buckets, in fact, it’s almost similar to that of a digging bucket. – While a clean-up bucket is definitely not meant for digging, its larger capacity proves helpful when a worksite needs cleaning. The clean-up bucket can carry and remove large loads of loose materials, leaving a worksite better than it was found. – A clean-up bucket is essentially an all-in-one finishing bucket that can level a surface and haul away large loads. If you’re in need of a grading bucket, this bucket can check off two needs at once.
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