HDPE hoses: The hose made of HDPE (high-density polyethylene) is connected at the very exit of the dredging pump, its flexibility allows buffering the oncoming slurry pressure and avoids blocking risk with substitute steel pipe. Normally the HDPE hoses’ cut-to-length available on the market includes 6m, 9m, and 12m with 6 inch inner diameter. To make sure the excavator’s boom could work forward and backward freely, the hose’s total length should be at least two times of the boom.

Seamless pipeline: The seamless pipeline provides higher strength and can bear maxmum 1MPa inner pressure. Seamless pipes commonly adopted are of 8″ external diamater and 6″ internal diamater with cut-to-length of 6 meters or 9 meters.

Floaters: Floaters made of polyethylene are ditributed about every 10 meters along the pipeline to keep it float on the water surface. They are often in bright colors for easy recognition and also impact-resistant.

∗ Specialized Track Shoes Material

As the most essential wear part, the track shoe cleats we produce are of China WISCO’s super high strength welding structure steel HG785D whose yield strength is 685MPa and tensile strength is 785MPa. Its impact energy under -20℃ is above 47J, and it enjoys good weldability and formability. The same material is selected for reinforcing the conjunction part of the pontoon’s side plate and top plate which is one of the key parts deciding the framework’s firmness. We choose stronger material than any other competitors around the world to effectively avoid the pontoon structure from deformation, and wins exceedingly high comments from customers about our track shoe cleats’ wearability and durability.

∗ Track Chain Roller

We choose 40Cr steel (DIN 41Cr4) for our track chain rollers which are one of the important wear parts during excavator’s daily operation. All rollers must go through heat treatment including quenching and tempering to enhance the hardness to HRC50-56.

∗ Wear Pad for Resistance

We choose special wear-resistant material NM400 for the wear pad to ensure it would not be easily worn out by the track chains. High-class material selection of the wear pad will extend the pontoon’s lifetime by 1-2 years on average.

∗ Screws Adopted for Amphibious Excavator

All screws equipped on our swamp buggy are treated with Dacromet process, and must go through salt spray test which lasts for 1000 hours. This highly improves the anti-corrosion ability of the screws, and thus allows the excavator to work longer in more severe working environment. The maintenance and replacement cycle of spare parts are thus extended.

∗ Hydraulic Oil Pipes & Fittings

Both the hydraulic oil pipes and fittings are of imported famous brands with good durability. And the external surface of all oil pipes are wrapped with a protective PVC layer to enhance its anti-corrosion and wear-resistant ability. All oil pipes are arranged in good oder with tidy layout.

∗ Guide&Drive Wheel Heat Treatment

The front idler and the drive sprocket both go through special heat treatment to ensure reliable hardness and strength.

∗ Steel Plate Shearing & Bending

All the plate bending is done by China’s top brand NC press brake machine which ensures high accuracy and unified bending curves. While thick steel plates are cut by plasma cutting machine, thin plate cutting is done by laser cutting machine, both quick and accurate with the cutting edge in good order without any iron scurf.

∗ Robot Welding of Pontoon Undercarriage

All the buckets and part of our pontoon undercarriage are automatically welded by the robot arm, especially spot welding areas. This not only ensures high welding accuracy, but also helps improve the entire productivity as well as reduce resource consumption and possible environment pollution.

∗ H-frame Machining

We customize every H-frame in accordance to the slewing bearing dimensions of different excavator brands and models. Each H frame is machined as a whole by a gantry type machining center and the circle of bolting holes are milled by the hole milling machine. This secures accurate matching for complete assembly and also enhances the overall parts consistency of the amphibious excavator, which will provide better operation feedback for the operators.

∗ Compartment Gastight Test

After welding, all the three vacuum chambers of the pontoon must receive gastight testing where 4 standard atmospheric pressure will be charged and held for 15 minutes. Only ensured no leakage by the test as well as proved qualified by other examinations will our amphibious excavators be allowed to leave the factory.

∗ Amphibious Undercarriage Painting

A fully automatic shot-blasting and painting line which cost USD12.5 million is running for our pontoon’s surface treatment from rust removing, shot-blasting, polishing, puttying, priming to top finishing, and the coating surface is even and smooth. The paint we use is specialized type for marine ship coating which is hard, wearable with good gloss and not easy to peel off. Each pontoon must go through shot blasting till Sa2.5 grade with surface roughness within 30-70um before getting coated. The thickness of coating layer must achieve 160~200um and each pontoon must have 2 layers of primer and two layers of top coats.

∗ Professional Swamp Buggy Assembly/Disassembly Workshop

We have a professional and skilled crawler excavator workforce team for disassembling the chassis and assemblying our pontoon undercarriage with the upper body. With their strict technical standards for motor positioning, hydraulic oil pipeline installation, and bolt/screw tightening, etc, our amphibious excavators’ installation precision is highly assured. Every set of RIVER’s excavator will also have a travel test and conventional commissioning before delivered to our customer.