Hydraulic
breakers
An auger attachment on a New Holland
excavator.
A Bodine excavator attachment.
Developed in response to the needs of mining,
quarrying, excavating, and tunnelling, the
pneumatic drill was proposed in 1844 by
Englishman C Brunton, and the first percussion
drill was patented five years later, in 1849, by
Philadelphia’s JJ Couch. That same year, Couch’s
assistant, JW Fowle, patented a percussion drill
of his own design. Within two years, Fowle
was able to use compressed air to drive his drill,
although he was unable to bring his drill into
p ractical use and it remained largely dormant.
powerful percussion hammer attached to an
excavator or other machine for demolishing
concrete, rock, and other hard materials. Breakers
are powered, at least in part, by the hydraulics of
the machine to which they are attached, or by an
auxiliary hydraulic system. The history of these
breakers can be traced back to the patenting of
the first steam-powered drill by Samuel Miller
in 1806. From there, the development of the
pneumatic drill was driven primarily by the needs
of the mining and tunnelling industries.
Excavator-mounted hydraulic breaker operating in Warsaw, Poland.
In 1963, Krupp Berco Bautechnik (acquired
by Atlas Copco in 2002) submitted the first
patent application for a hydraulic percussion
mechanism. Four years later, the company
introduced the world’s first hydraulic hammer —
the HM 400 rig-mounted hydraulic breaker — at
the Hannover Fair, selling 2 000 units. Montabert
also claims to have developed the first hydraulic
breaker. Initially available in France, in 1969
the company’s hydraulic rock breaker became
available worldwide. Although it is difficult to
“
Today, a vast array
of attachments
is available for
all makes and
sizes of hydraulic
excavators.”
NOVEMBER 2017
33