4 Cool Excavator Attachments and Modifications

Over the years, we’ve had customers share the interesting — and sometimes unique — ways they’ve put their Volvo excavators to work. Here are four of our favorites. 

Using a demolition excavator to resurface a dam that’s 450 feet long with 100 feet of main spillway? That’s a job D’Amato Construction took on in Connecticut. And they did it with the help of a high-reach boom with a unique Volvo design that allows it to be easily changed out to a digging boom.

Another key to getting the job done right was putting a Steelwrist tiltrotator with a RockWheel hydraulic rotary cutter at the business end of the boom.

For an article in Construction Equipment Guide, company Vice President Thomas D’Amato added: “The critical piece of this equation was the Steelwrist tiltrotator, which allows the attachment at the end of the stick to have 360 degrees of rotation and up to 45 degrees of tilt. This means if we can get that attachment to the face of the dam from virtually any angle, we can have the grinder meet the wall perfectly square and accomplish the task at hand more quickly and without the danger and cost of putting twenty people on the face of the dam.”

The SAS Extreme™ Auto Processor attachment enables precision auto dismantling of end-of-life vehicles (ELV) to allow auto recyclers to capture high-value materials. The attachment is engineered specifically for medium-sized excavators. In the video, you can see it easily picking apart a scrap vehicle, piece by piece.

Removing trees and brush can be an arduous task. The Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community in Arizona found a way to turn clean-up days into clean-up hours: using a Volvo EW180E wheeled excavator and outfitting it with a Steelwrist tiltrotator and Slashbuster brush cutter attachment. 

The excavator’s entire cab can swing 360 degrees, offering superior working range and visibility compared to a backhoe. The tiltrotator let operators dig sideways and in reverse. And with an 18-inch diameter and 52-inch-wide cutting swath, the brush cutter let them shred and mulch nuisance trees and brush along canal banks.

A habitat restoration project on an island in Chesapeake Bay presented extra challenges for the use of heavy equipment. Chief among them was that a lot of the work was happening below sea level, so the terrain was soft and water infiltration was constant. 

The Maryland Environmental Service solved this with a specially modified Volvo 30-ton excavator with the standard tracks replaced with custom flotation pads. Check out this amphibious excavator at work. 

Share Your Excavator Story

Do you have a video or photo of an interesting attachment or modification for your Volvo excavator? If so, tag us on Facebook or Instagram. To learn how to get the most out of your excavator, visit our excavator resource center.