The Difference Between an Excavator Shell Bucket and an Ordinary Excavator Bucket

While excavator shell buckets and excavator buckets may appear to function similarly, they differ fundamentally in their operational logic. This difference is magnified in bulk material handling scenarios, directly impacting both construction efficiency and cost control.

1. Excavator buckets

The core design principle of an excavator bucket is "excavation." Its curved, enclosed structure relies on the blades to cut into the material before lifting and transporting it. This structure excels in earthwork excavation, but it struggles with bulk materials like sand, gravel, and coal. During lifting and transport, the material, which fills the bucket, easily spills from the opening. During bulk cargo loading operations at ports, an excavator bucket typically handles no more than 200 tons per hour, consuming significant time in repeated unloading and cleaning of spilled material.

2. Excavator Shell Buckets

The shell bucket for excavators is designed with "precise gripping" in mind. Its double-flap bucket resembles the opening and closing structure of a shell, creating a completely sealed space when closed. This feature ensures virtually zero spillage when loading bulk materials. Crucially, the opening and closing angles can be precisely controlled by a hydraulic system, enabling both full grabbing and precise, "small, multiple" unloading. In the sand and gravel batching process of concrete mixing plants, the shell bucket's unloading error can be controlled to within 5%, far lower than the 15%-20% fluctuation range of conventional buckets.

The gap between the two widens further in challenging environments. During underwater dredging operations, the excavator bucket loses over 30% of its material due to water flow when it is raised. However, the sealed chamber formed by the closed shell bucket increases material retention to over 90%. When operating on inclined slopes, the shell bucket's double-flap locking structure prevents material from slipping, while conventional buckets often require multiple angle adjustments to complete an effective load. From a cycle perspective, the shell bucket's continuous "grab-seal-precise discharge" action can reduce single operation time by 15%-20%.

The competition between excavator buckets and excavator buckets is essentially a case of "targeted design" surpassing "universal design." In the field of bulk material handling, buckets are becoming the preferred equipment in more and more engineering scenarios.