It's really eye-opening! The "strange hands" that Masanobu once had.

In Taiwan, excavators are also called "Strange Hands". In the mainland, they are also called like that. I won't list any examples here. After seeing many excavators, I don't find them strange anymore because they are all quite similar. However, there are indeed some rather strange excavators. So, let's really consider them as "Strange Hands".

For instance, Shumeng once had a PF55L excavator. Around the -3 era, this machine was based on the PC210-3 and was called the "all-rounder excavator". Its appearance seemed to have no significant differences from ordinary excavators, but the most notable feature of this machine was that the boom could rotate 360 degrees around the longitudinal axis. Therefore, the bucket could dig in any direction, greatly expanding the degree of freedom.

To enable the bucket arm to rotate freely, the bucket arm is not a single unit but is divided into two parts. The upper part and the lower part are connected by bearings, and there is a rotating gear ring inside. On the upper part, there is a rotating motor.

At the same time, in order to ensure 360-degree rotation in any direction, the oil pipe of the bucket cylinder must also pass through the internal rotating connector. The entire rotating structure is essentially the same as the rotation of the excavator's upper vehicle and chassis.

With this rotating motor, the driver can freely adjust the direction of the bucket, greatly expanding the digging area. At the same time, to fully utilize the machine's advantage of digging any part, the boom of this machine is designed in a two-section style, further expanding the digging range. Without moving the location, digging a square and deep pit is no longer a difficult task. Of course, apart from digging pits, the PF55L can also do many other things. The key lies in how you use it.

However, while significantly increasing flexibility, the PF55L inevitably comes at a certain cost. For instance, the overall strength of the working device decreases, making it difficult to handle heavy tasks, and the complexity of operation also increases. As a result, this machine did not achieve great sales success.

After that, some machines still adopted this rotating bucket arm design. However, the current popular design has shifted the rotating part below the bucket arm, achieving only partial rotation, thereby increasing flexibility with a relatively smaller cost.