Anvil Dredging Equipment Bound for Saudi Arabia
Anvil Attachments’ latest shipment of dredging buckets and grapples are on an 8,000 mile journey to Saudi Arabia.
Anvil Attachments’ headquarters and manufacturing facility is located in Slaughter, Louisiana, a few miles north of Baton Rouge. Slaughter is a small town, with a population of only 988 people, according to 2011 statistics. And yet, Anvil is the premier manufacturer of cable and hydraulic clamshell buckets, and orange peel grapples in the world.
Anvil recently shipped a large order of dredging buckets and rock grapples to one of its longtime customers in Saudi Arabia. This customer has used Anvil’s dredging buckets and rock grabs on some of the world’s largest and highest profile dredging projects, such as the Palm Island project in Dubai. This project involved moving over 5,000,000 cubic meters of rocks and a total volume of dredging and filling of over 33,600,000 cubic meters.
Their recent purchase included three 5 cubic yard, two rope, extra-heavy duty round nose dredging buckets. These buckets included weld-on replaceable teeth. What makes this bucket “heavy duty” is the weight and the size of the steel plate it is made from. A standard 5 cubic yard round nose dredging bucket weighs about 16,000 pounds. Anvil’s heavy duty version weighs in at over 25,000 pounds and is built with 3½” A514 steel. A standard feature on Anvil’s round nose dredging buckets is the suction bars. These bars are welded to the outside of the bowl, and they help prevent the shocking suction action when the bowl is lifted from the material and water surface. They also help with the digging action.
On the same order, this customer also purchased two of Anvil’s RA series rock grapples. These are 17 ton, 4 tine, 2 rope cable rock grabs for handling stone. These rock grabs are a unique design that only Anvil offers. Each tine is fully independent throughout the closing cycle; this assures a positive grip, regardless of the shape of the material being handled. The rock grapple has two pairs of tines, the toggle tines and the arm tines. When the first tine contacts the load, the closing power is transferred to the opposite tine, which closes until it contacts the load. Once all four tines are in contact with the load, the gripping strength is equalized, and the load is firmly clamped in the tines. This allows the RA series grapple to handle rocks that are uneven in size and rocks that are larger than the grapple, as it only needs a portion of the rock to grab on to.
The RA series rock grapples are heavy duty as well; each tine is cut from 6 inch solid steel plate, and they come with replaceable tooth points.
Anvil continues to demonstrate their worldwide reach. In 2012, they won the prestigious IBJ Award for Best Grab. This is an international award and features competition from companies around the world.
