Guides
Technical Guides
Technical knowledge that holds up on site, with its sources stated.
When a breaker stops on site the question is always the same: what caused it, and where do you start? That is what this section is for. Each guide takes one subject and follows it from diagnosis to fix, in the detail someone who knows the machine would give you, and plainly enough to use on site.
About numbers: values such as nitrogen pressure, tightening torque and wear limits change from one model to the next. We do not print a general figure here, because the wrong value damages the machine. The guides show you how the job is done; for the figure that belongs to your model, check your manual or send us the model code and we will look it up.
Editor: Ahmet Akkaya
Faults and diagnosis
Why does breaker nitrogen pressure drop, and how do you tell?
A breaker with low nitrogen pressure strikes weakly, drops in blow rate and runs unusually hot at the back head. Pressure falls for three reasons: seals ageing and leaking, the slow natural loss of gas over time, and damage to the diaphragm or accumulator.
Read →Bushing wear: why replacing the seal alone does not fix it
When a breaker leaks oil, the usual response is a new seal. But the seal is often the symptom, not the cause: once the bushing wears, the tool no longer runs on centre, the seal takes an uneven load and the new seal fails within weeks.
Read →Piston surface damage: the chain that starts with dirty oil
Longitudinal scoring on a breaker piston is almost never a material fault; it is caused by hard particles in the hydraulic oil being crushed between piston and cylinder. The chain begins with dirty oil, continues as scoring, accelerates when the seal is cut, and then feeds itself as the growing leak draws in more dirt.
Read →Tie rod torque: early signs of loosening and the right tightening order
Tie rods clamp the three main body parts of a breaker together and are stretched by every blow. When one loosens, its load shifts to the others, micro-movement begins at the body joints and the chain usually ends in a broken rod.
Read →Hydraulic oil contamination: the invisible cause behind most failures
Scored pistons, sticking valves, short seal life and overheating look like separate failures, but they usually share one root: solid particles, water and air in the hydraulic oil. Dirt normally enters through fittings left open at a tool change, a blocked tank breather, and swarf left inside new hoses.
Read →Reading the sound of a breaker: what each noise is telling you
Most breaker faults can be noticed by ear before any instrument comes out. A healthy breaker produces an evenly spaced, solid, single-body sound.
Read →Run-in after repair: how to work a rebuilt breaker in its first hours
The first working hours of a rebuilt breaker shape the months that follow. Until new bushings, seals and piston surfaces bed in, friction and heat run higher than normal.
Read →Tool choice and life
Hard rock tools: when they are worth it and when they are waste
Special alloy or extra-hardened tools are better against wear, not against breakage. So the decision comes down to one question: are your tools finishing by wearing, or by breaking? If they wear out and the site is abrasive, a hard rock tool pays for itself.
Read →Tool diameter and breaker match: the hidden cost of the wrong size
Tool diameter has to match the bushing bore of the breaker, and "it went in, so it fits" is not a test. An undersized tool runs with play; it shifts sideways on every blow, eats the bushing and the seal and sends the piston blow off-axis.
Read →Dust channel tools: where they actually pay off
A dust channel tool carries compressed air, or in some cases water, through a bore along the shank to push dust away from the bushing area. On dry, dusty and enclosed sites it visibly extends bushing and seal life.
Read →Tool mushrooming: causes and the limits of dressing
Mushrooming is the striking end of the tool being crushed and spread sideways by the piston. Blank firing is the main cause; a wrong tool-to-breaker match and overheating accelerate it.
Read →Moil, chisel, blunt, pyramid: which tool wins in which material?
Tool choice follows how the material breaks, not how hard it is. A moil point penetrates and cracks from within; the general-purpose answer.
Read →Lubrication
Combining excavator and attachment greasing into one schedule
An excavator and an attachment need greasing at different intervals, but keeping two separate schedules means in practice that one always gets skipped, and it is usually the attachment. The answer is to merge them into one pre-shift list, put the attachment line among the machine lines rather than after them, and give the responsibility to one named person.
Read →Correct greasing technique: tool pressed up, or hanging free?
Grease goes in with the tool pressed upward. With the tool hanging free it drops under its own weight and opens a gap between tool and bushing; grease pumped into that gap escapes straight out instead of spreading through the bushing.
Read →Breaker grease versus general purpose grease
A breaker bushing works under a load found nowhere else on an excavator: dozens of blows a second, high temperature and constant dust. General purpose excavator grease cannot hold its film under that, thins as it heats and is pumped out of the bushing.
Read →When does an automatic lubrication system pay for itself?
Automatic lubrication feeds grease continuously and in measured amounts while the breaker works, so the film between bushing and tool is never interrupted. It pays for itself fastest where the breaker runs long hours and the operator has no chance to get down with a grease gun: quarries, tunnels, continuous demolition.
Read →Attachment choice and use
Mini excavator attachments: what is possible in confined spaces
A mini excavator works where a large machine cannot go: interior refurbishment, basements, courtyards, narrow streets, barns and greenhouses. The HKM attachment range starts at 0.7-tonne carriers, and in that class breakers, augers, grapples, rippers and small concrete cutters are genuinely usable.
Read →Pulveriser versus shear: the most expensive mix-up
A pulveriser is built to crush concrete away from the rebar: wide jaws, force aimed at crushing. A shear is built to cut metal: narrow blades, force concentrated on a single cutting line.
Read →When is a ripper enough, and when do you switch to a breaker?
A ripper is a passive attachment: it has no hydraulic supply and works by prising material apart with the boom and arm force of the machine. That makes it cheap, simple and maintenance-free.
Read →On which projects does a drum cutter beat a breaker?
A breaker cracks material away; a drum cutter mills it from the surface. In bulk excavation the breaker is faster and leads on most jobs.
Read →Does a crusher bucket really pay for itself?
The value of a crusher bucket builds up not in crushing material but in material never leaving site. If you can size demolition rubble or quarry waste where it lies and use it there, truck movements, haulage charges, tipping fees and the cost of buying backfill all disappear at once.
Read →One machine, many attachments: the quick coupler calculation
The real gain from a quick coupler is not the minutes saved but the attachment changes that start happening at all. Because pinning takes half an hour, operators usually carry on with whatever is fitted and work with the wrong tool.
Read →Oil flow and pressure: reading the catalogue correctly
Once tonnage fits, the second criterion is hydraulic, and it is read from two figures: oil flow (l/min) and operating pressure (bar). Below the range the attachment works slowly and weakly; above it, the excess flow turns into heat, the oil warms and seal life shortens.
Read →Matching attachment to carrier weight: the rule that never changes
Whichever attachment you choose, the first criterion is carrier weight, and it is not open to negotiation. An attachment that is too light for the machine gets crushed by the machine own force and finishes quickly.
Read →Attachment basics
What is a concrete cutter and how does it work?
A concrete cutter is an attachment that takes reinforced concrete elements off a structure with two jaws fed from the hydraulic circuit of an excavator. Pointed jaw tips first penetrate the concrete section, then keep closing until the remaining section fails in tension; the industry calls this principle cut and crack.
Read →What is a concrete pulverizer and how does it work?
A pulverizer is an attachment connected to the hydraulic circuit of an excavator that crumbles reinforced concrete by squeezing it between two jaws. Because concrete is brittle, that squeeze cracks it from the inside and breaks it apart, while the rebar inside is stripped clear without snapping.
Read →What is a grapple, how does it work and what types are there?
A grapple is a hydraulic attachment fitted to the stick of an excavator that grips material between opposing jaws and carries it. It does not dig like a bucket: it holds a piece, lifts it, turns it in the air where needed and sets it down under control at a chosen point.
Read →What is a quick coupler, how does it work and what does it change?
A quick coupler is an interface unit mounted between the stick of an excavator and the attachment, which mechanically captures and locks the attachment pins. It has a single job: to turn the switch between bucket, breaker, ripper, auger or grapple from a pin-removal exercise into a short manoeuvre.
Read →What is a ripper, how does it work and where does it help?
A ripper is a passive attachment fitted to the stick of an excavator that tears hard ground apart with its tooth. It has no hydraulic supply; all of its force comes from the boom and stick movement of the carrier.
Read →What is a vertical drum cutter and how does it work?
A vertical drum cutter is a milling attachment fitted to the stick of an excavator that turns a single wide drum on an axis in line with the stick; it is also called an axial drum cutter. The picks on the drum take rock, concrete and hard ground away from the surface in thin layers, with no impact.
Read →What is a drum cutter and how does it work?
A drum cutter is a hydraulic attachment fitted to the stick of an excavator that mills rock, concrete and hard ground away from the surface with the picks on its rotating drums. It applies no impact to the material; as the picks turn they shave thin chips off the surface, and excavation advances as those chips accumulate.
Read →What is a crusher bucket and how does it work?
A crusher bucket is an excavator attachment, mounted on the stick, whose body houses a jaw crushing mechanism. Concrete, rock and rubble taken in through the mouth of the bucket are squeezed between a fixed jaw and a moving jaw until they break, and material reduced to the target size falls out through the bottom.
Read →Mining, quarrying, drilling
HDD and trenchless technology: what changes in a city?
Trenchless methods allow pipe and cable to be installed without opening the surface. In a city the real gain is not in excavation cost but in the secondary costs of open-cut disappearing: road closures, stripping and reinstating the road surface, complaints from businesses and residents, safety zones and time.
Read →Drill bit selection: button bits and the DTH difference
There are two basic systems in rock drilling, and the difference is where the hammer sits. In top hammer drilling the impact is generated above the machine and transmitted down the drill string; it is fast, but energy loss grows with depth.
Read →Slope trimming and scaling: breaker or drum cutter?
Slope work divides into two, and that division decides the attachment. Scaling means bringing down loose or hanging blocks that could fall; it needs point intervention and a breaker does it fast.
Read →Rock hardness (UCS) and abrasivity: how they shape the decision
Two values used to describe rock get confused with each other: compressive strength (UCS, resistance to breaking) and abrasivity (how much it wears equipment). These are independent properties.
Read →When does blast-free excavation become mandatory?
Blasting is the fastest and cheapest method for bulk excavation; mechanical excavation cannot match it for speed. Blast-free excavation is therefore a matter of necessity rather than preference, and it comes into play in three situations: when vibration limits to a nearby structure would be exceeded, when explosives permits cannot be obtained or take too long, and when the excavation line runs close enough to buried services such as pipes, cables or tunnels.
Read →Secondary breaking: the invisible bottleneck in quarry output
Blasting is the stage everyone watches on site, but the real bottleneck usually appears after it: blocks too large to enter the crushing plant. They sit waiting, get separated, sometimes marked for a second blast.
Read →Demolition and recycling
Scrap steel recovery: what clean separation is worth
The value of scrap steel is set not only by its weight but by how cleanly it is delivered. Rebar with concrete still attached, piles containing mixed metals and pieces too large to transport are priced lower because they require further processing at the buyer.
Read →Urban demolition: neighbours and vibration measurement
What delays urban demolition is usually not a technical problem but a complaint from neighbours. Once a complaint arrives, the argument becomes "is there vibration or not", and whichever side has no measurement loses it.
Read →Attachment order in reinforced concrete demolition
The attachments used in reinforced concrete demolition are well known; what makes the difference is the order they are used in. The correct order runs from mass reduction, to separating concrete from rebar, to cutting metal, to sizing.
Read →On-site recycling economics: the haulage calculation
The economics of on-site recycling do not come from one cost line but four: haulage out, tipping fees, material bought in for backfill, and the haulage of that material to site. Processing rubble on site removes all four at once, which is why the calculation looks far weaker when compared against "crushing cost" alone.
Read →Selective dismantling: how it is planned before anything comes down
Selective dismantling means taking a building apart by material group, in reverse of the order it was built, rather than bringing it down in one go. The aim is twofold: separating recoverable material cleanly, and keeping hazardous or contaminating material out of the rubble.
Read →Site and fleet management
Operator training: the single habit that extends breaker life most
Two breakers of the same brand and model give very different lives in the hands of two different operators. What creates the difference is not one technical detail but a handful of habits, and the most important of them is not blank firing.
Read →Attachment standardisation: same bracket, same tool diameter
As a fleet grows, attachment variety quietly increases, and every new variant brings its own stock line, its own tool diameter and its own bracket. Standardisation means preferring, when buying new equipment, models that share the same tool diameter, the same mounting system and where possible the same spare parts group as what you already have.
Read →Critical spare parts stock: what should be on site?
A critical part is not an expensive part; it is one whose absence stops the machine and which cannot be obtained quickly. Three criteria define criticality: probability of failure, lead time, and whether you can work without it.
Read →Downtime: the cost that dwarfs the price of the part
The cost of a breakdown is not the part price written on the invoice. When a machine stops, the operator waits, other crews on site wait, the programme slips and on some contracts delay penalties start.
Read →Export and purchasing
Why test reports matter: what to check before shipment
Pre-shipment inspection means confirming that goods are in the expected condition before they leave, and it prevents most of the arguments that arise on arrival. It covers three headings: that the product is the right model and configuration, that a test record documents it as working, and that the packing suits the journey.
Read →HS code and customs when importing breakers: what to watch
The HS code (Harmonised System) is the international classification number that determines which category a product falls into at customs, and it affects everything from the duty rate to the documents required. A wrong code carries risk in two directions: paying too much duty, or penalties and delays from an incorrect declaration.
Read →FOB or CIF: the real cost difference for the buyer
The delivery term (Incoterm) determines what the price covers and where risk changes hands; for two quotes to be comparable, both have to be given on the same term. An FOB price covers costs up to loading the goods onto the vessel at the port of shipment; sea freight and insurance are the buyer responsibility.
Read →Other resources in this section
Fault-finding guides
Start from the symptom: not striking, striking weakly, blank firing, overheating, leaking oil.
Attachment selector
Enter your machine tonnage and see what fits. Every attachment family on one screen.
Comparisons
Breaker or ripper, drum cutter, Red or Grey, with the limits of both sides stated.
Industry glossary
90 terms, 13 categories, three languages and links into the site.