Ben Johnson, 34 year old ISRO scientist, turned his old car into excavator which has a lifting capacity of maximum 500 kg.
Sreedhu S S
A visual of Ben Jacob on his Homemade Backhoe Excavator posted his YouTube page DIY Homemade Projects | credits: DIY Homemade Projects)
Thiruvananthapuram: Ben Johnson, 34 year old ISRO scientist, turned his old car into excavator which has a lifting capacity of maximum 500 kg. The backhoe weighs 1.1 tonnes and it has a vertical and horizontal reach of 14 feet and digging force of six tonnes. He says it's belongs to 'Mini Excavator' category.
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The transformation is completed in a duration of 2 months in the lockdown period. This second-hand car was purchased for his wife a few years ago. And now it's more than two decades old, so he decided to change it something useful instead of disposing. After seeking many ideas he finalized that to set a backhoe. He began his work on May 2020. And it got ready by July-August due to the delay of getting ordered parts from Gujarat because of covid pandemic. Now it can be used for farms, digging ponds etc.. The making cost of this machine is ₹ 70,000 which shows an exemplar of low-cost and reusability, where the cost of an actual Mini Excavator is around Rs. 20 lakh.
The old Daewoo Matiz car was convert into backhoe by using hydraulic cylinders with 63 mm bore diameter and 36 mm rode diameter. Here hydraulic gear pump, maximum pressure is 160 bar and flowrate is 23 lpm at 1440 rpm, is used for generating hydraulic pressure and gear pump is driven by the engine through chain sprocket.The pressurized oil flow is diverted to cylinders using directional control valves. The valve is of parallel circuit, open centre type. All framework of arm and boom are made with structural steel 100x50x3.2 mm thick. Grease nipples are given at all moving joints for lubrication. The bucket tear-out force is 2 tonnes. Piston force is around 6 tonnes at 160 bar. I have used 150 micron suction strainer and 25 micron return line filter.This project has turned out to be much better than I initially thought. The enormous power of the backhoe simply amazes me.
-Ben Johnson said on his DIY Homemade Project YouTube Page
His next ongoing projects are harnessing of renewable energy sources like wind and solar power, he added.