When choosing bucket teeth adaptors, it is critical to ensure that matching bucket teeth are affordable and can be supported and supplied in the medium and long term.
Cutting Edges regularly sees cases where large mining companies have installed bucket teeth adaptors from large suppliers but cannot easily source matching bucket teeth to fit those adaptors, or those bucket teeth are prohibitively expensive.
The issue arises because there may be a patent on the adaptor and any bucket teeth that fit the adaptor must be produced by that supplier or custom built.
In a global market where demand for Ground Engaging Tools (G.E.T) is increasing, Australia’s remote mining sites and their relatively low consumption of G.E.T compared to sites in countries like Indonesia can mean bucket teeth are hard to access or expensive. COVID-19 has exacerbated this supply issue.
For companies who have locked in their bucket teeth to one supplier (and they may be considered a small client and low priority for that supplier) two problems can arise:
- They overpay for their bucket teeth, making the whole system expensive
- Sometimes they cannot access the bucket teeth at all, leaving machines idle
As a result, Cutting Edges are seeing large and small sites running out of bucket teeth and having machines sitting idle because they cannot find wear parts to fit their adaptors.
These companies could change to a generic adaptor that works with more generic bucket teeth, however this would attract significant cost including labour, machinery downtime and the hard cost of any new adaptor system.
A change may also undermine the reasons – often safety related – the business chose the patented bucket tooth adaptor system in the first place.
Evaluate and ensure bucket teeth supply chains
As an end user of ground engaging tools (G.E.T), you want the best system possible, at a competitive price, without having to worry about supply issues.
Evaluating long-term parts supply security is crucial to helping ensure you choose the right adaptor and tooth system from the start.
Cutting Edges’ solutions are two-fold. With an extensive Australian network of factories, warehouses and branches, we have the local manufacturing capabilities and supply chains to help ensure the right bucket teeth are never far away, whether you choose our patented R Lock system or one of the generic models we supply.
We are also committed to never providing adaptor systems without being able to supply bucket teeth for that adaptor in the long term.
Core to our secure supply chain offering is our Complimentary Site Audit service, designed to formalise maintenance cycles, identify problem areas and ensure you have the right bucket teeth and other earthmoving spare parts as and when you need them.