Excavator bucket design

The main types of excavator buckets are:

General Purpose Buckets (GP)
Typical width: 800-1600 mm. Typical volume: 500-3800 litres. Often with teeth.

Heavy Duty Buckets (HD) including Extreme Service Buckets and Rock Buckets
For high abrasive material. With teeth. If a machine is to have only one tool, then this is the one to have.

Clean-up Buckets
These extra wide, extra capacity, buckets are generally meant for work in granular and soft materials. Teeth are never applied but bolt on cutting edges often are.

Ditching Buckets and Trapezoidal Buckets
For ditches and cables. Typical width: 200-800 mm. Often with teeth.

An excavator bucket is built up of a shell (or shell and floor), sides and a cutting edge. An upper beam strengthens the bucket.
To prolong the life of the edge, a harder and thicker plate can be added, or teeth with or without segments or shrouds between the teeth. The sides can be completed with side cheek plates, side cutters and side corners. Wear bars or plates can be attached to the bottom and backside of the shell. Attached protection can be welded, bolted or equipped with self-locking wedges to the bucket. Bolt-on and self-locking connections result in quick changes with short down-time periods.

Loader bucket design

The main types of loader buckets are:

General Purpose Buckets (GP)
Typical width: 2.0-3.6 m. Typical volume: 1.5-4.0 m3. Often with teeth.

Heavy Duty Buckets (HD)
For highly abrasive material, mainly in quarries and mining. Normally with teeth and segments.

Landfill Buckets and Clean-up Buckets
For spreading material at landfill. Normally without teeth.

Light Material Buckets
Also speciality-designed buckets for material handling, as for fertilizer, woodchips, snow or coal. Typical volume 3.0-6.0 m3. Without teeth.

Multi-Purpose Buckets
With extra equipment, e g with dozing blade, grips, side dumping, sand spreader.


The design is similar to the excavator bucket, with a shell (or shell and floor), sides and a cutting edge. An upper beam strengthens the bucket. The loader bucket is often equipped with a spill protection plate on the top. The width is about 2-3 times the height.  To prolong the life of the edge, it can be protected by a bolt-on edge, or teeth with or without segments or shrouds between the teeth. The sides can be protected by side wear plates and side cutters. Wear plates can be attached to the bottom of the shell. Attached protection can be welded, bolted or equipped with self-locking wedges to the bucket. Bolt-on and self-locking connections result in quick changes with short down-time periods. Some buckets are obtuse-angled or with a V shaped bottom. They are designed for gravel, fine broken rock, ore and frozen material, when a large penetration force is necessary. As the cut deepens, additional teeth are able to penetrate the material continuing to cut in a ripper like manner.

Dragline bucket design

A dragline bucket consists of three parts, the basket, the arch and the cutting edge. It can be completed with teeth, segments and shrouds as described for the excavator buckets. The dragline basket for medium density material of 1.8-2.2 tons/m3 is typically filled in about 10-15 seconds, with a volume of about 90 to 250 m3.