Short answer
A service record does two jobs: getting maintenance done on time, and proving that it was. The second rarely matters until a warranty question arises, and on that day a record cannot be produced retrospectively. The backbone of the record is running hours, and this is where the real problem sits: the carrier’s hour meter counts the time the machine ran, not the time the attachment worked. Tie the plan to the wrong meter and a lightly used attachment goes to service for nothing while a heavily used one is caught too late.
Why carrier hours are not enough
In a ten hour excavator shift the breaker may have worked three; the rest goes on digging, repositioning and waiting. A plan built on carrier hours cannot see that difference.
Nor does the error run one way. If two breakers are used in rotation on the same site, both share the same machine’s hours while one may in truth have worked twice as much as the other. Once attachments move between machines, the arithmetic falls apart entirely.
So the right basis for attachment maintenance is the attachment’s own working time. Where no measurement exists, the most practical approach is an operator estimate written at the end of the shift; imperfect, but better than carrier hours.
What belongs in the record
- The attachment’s identity: make, model and serial number. "The yellow breaker" is not a record; the day a second one arrives on site, it becomes useless.
- Date and estimated working time. Where there is no time figure, write the number of shifts.
- What was done: greasing, checks, parts changed, overhaul. The name of the part changed and, where possible, its part number.
- Any fault found, written as an observation. "Cracked paint around the third nut", not a diagnosis.
- Who did it. Not for blame but for traceability: knowing who saw a fault shortens the question that comes later.
- The grease and oil types used. This is among the first things asked in a warranty assessment.
The warranty side: what a record proves
A warranty assessment tries to separate a manufacturing cause from a usage cause. What usually makes that separation possible is the record: that greasing was done, that the right grease was used, that service was carried out on time, and under what conditions the failure appeared.
The absence of a record does not invalidate a claim on its own, but it slows the assessment and moves the discussion onto uncertain ground. The party with a record tells a story that can be checked; without one it stays an interpretation.
That is why the most valuable part of a record covers the period before the failure. A record started after the failure says very little by itself.
We do not print HKM warranty terms on this page
Warranty scope, duration and exclusions vary with the terms of sale and the product; what we describe here is general practice. For the cover on your own attachment, check your sales documents or write to us with the model code and we will send it in writing.
Three limits of a paper logbook
None of this makes paper worthless; for a firm with a single breaker, paper is enough. But as the number of attachments grows and they begin to move between sites, the record has to live on the attachment.
- Nobody notices when it stops being filled in. A blank sheet is too quiet to be told apart from a full one.
- It stays behind when the attachment moves. A breaker sent to another site usually leaves its logbook at the old one.
- Working time is entered as an estimate, and estimates drift optimistic. Time written at the end of a shift comes out consistently different from time actually worked.
Tying the record to the attachment
Tying the record to the attachment solves two things at once: hours are genuinely counted on the attachment, and the history travels with it when it changes machine.
What that means in practice is that the maintenance plan leaves the realm of guessing. "This breaker is probably about due" becomes "this breaker has worked this many hours", and the service plan follows from that.
The same record helps in any dispute over a failure. When how much was worked on which day, where the standstills fell and when service was done are all written down, the assessment rests on data rather than recollection.
What HKM uses
SolidTrack: hours counted on the attachment
The unit mounted on the breaker records the time the breaker actually worked, independently of the carrier, and ties service reminders and service history to those hours. When the attachment moves to another machine, the record goes with it.
The SolidTrack breaker solution(solidtrack.io)