This is the Artillian iron fist grapple that has a really unique clamshell set up here on the front that grasps your load. There's some stuff on this grapple that I really like. Some things that maybe I think could be a little bit different. We're going to go and talk through some of the pros and cons of this new grapple design. There are two primary styles of grapples on the market, a root rake type grapple, which is a clam shell that's held really tight to the tractor. Great for manipulating brush and loose piles of things. There's a traditional grapple with a floor that goes underneath of your load and clamps it from the top that's really good for grabbing larger logs and manipulating larger items, but neither of those is necessarily perfect for all situations. If you're, say, trying to grab a pile of loose brush with a grapple with a floor, it doesn't grasp it very tightly. Or if you're trying to grab a large log with a clamshell type grapple, you have to keep constant pressure on that to keep the grapple from dropping the log out the bottom. This iron fist design, though, takes an approach that covers all of these things, and we'll show this out here a little bit today, by having this additional joint here.
When this thing comes closed, this bottom lid here comes around, scoops across the bottom of the grapple, and comes up and grasps loose material down here in the middle of the grapple. This is going to allow it to be able to grab logs or small brush equally well. This motion here I think is really cool. It's innovative. And that is one thing I really like about the Artillian company. When they come out with products, they definitely take a fresh approach to things. This is not ever the cheapest stuff that you're going to find, but it's definitely thoughtful stuff. The apple of the equipment industry. There's an unboxing experience here if that's possible with your grapples. This stuff is beautifully packaged, is beautifully powder coated. It is really nicely thought out, but in some ways, maybe a little overengineered when it comes to their modular system on the back. You'll find some very opinionated people out here when it comes to Artillian implements. There is a customer that this product makes sense for particularly in smaller tractors.
The approach that Artillian takes is by using a pallet fork frame back on your loader, and then allowing you to slide a grapple module, a grapple floor module, maybe pallet forks, maybe a snow plow, all kinds of different things onto that pallet fork frame, giving you multiple uses for what would otherwise just be a simple fork frame. If you're buying into the Artillian ecosystem and you have use for all of these things, it can be a really good value product. That does change though a little bit when you get up to this bigger tractor. And I'm not so sure how much the modular system makes sense with this grapple module. You see, on the smaller Artillian pieces, those things are light enough and small enough that you can easily manipulate them. If you want to switch from a grapple to pallet forks, you slide the modules off, you slide your pallet fork on, and away you go.
But this module weighs nearly 90 pounds. It was quite a lot of effort for me to slide it up here onto the fork frame and put it in place. And the last thing that I would want to do would be to disassemble this whole thing, manipulate all these heavy pieces to put my pallet forks back on again. One thing I would like to see Artillian come out within the future is to take their really innovative grapple here, but have it on a traditional frame. You could cost reduce this thing quite a lot by removing all the weight and stuff here in the back and come out with a traditional dedicated grapple that may not be on their modular system. When pictures of this first started coming out on the internet, many of you looked at this and said, My goodness, that looks complicated," or, "It's going to break," or, "It's going to bend," or whatever. Standing in here with one of these things in person and looking how it's built, I have a hard time seeing how that could happen.
This is three-eighths thick steel. They're all nicely engineered parts that are laser cut. The engineering that goes into this whole motion was really obviously done by a very thoughtful person. It's really hard to see how you would bend this stuff up. There's very little horizontal play in the grapple itself if you were to somehow twist something here. And it's normal motion up or down, or say, even if you got a stick or something pinched into here, I can't see how you would have enough force into any of this mechanism in order to bend anything, but I'll certainly try and find out. I wouldn't have any concerns here as far as durability goes. Also, it doesn't appear to be any grease zerks or anything in here. These are all non-serviceable fittings. Everything does move really smoothly. You can see, I can push it up and down here. You notice that the other one's moving, that's because the hydraulics are flowing from one side to the other. Really smooth motion. There's nothing binding in here. And again, all service free joints. I don't have concerns here as far as durability goes.
I've been piling up sticks down here all winter long as they've been falling off of the trees down here along my driveway. I can pull into this, hit the buttons, and have those clamps come down. And you can hear some of the cracking as those clamps grasp a hold of that loose pile. The thing that really impressed me here was when I grabbed this stack of dead bamboo down here, this small, loose stuff is something that I feel like a grapple like this, rather, a floor style grapple really struggles with. And you can see how I can get into that and the clamps actually wrap around the bamboo and grasp it. And I got a bundle of it in there. Now, the loose stuff that I have isn't going to fall out the sides. It's not going to drip off as I'm driving around to my pile. It really keeps a good tight [inaudible 00:06:12] fist. It's reached in there and it's grabbed it. All right. That's pushing the lift capacity of my tractor right there. I would've placed these down here using the old Artillian grapple without this wall system on it.
One thing I think is neat here is all the teeth and serrations that are across the lids, you can see, I can't wrap the entire way around that huge log. And so they do a good job of keeping ahold of this, even when I can't grasp the entire thing. Yeah, that back tire is off the ground. That might be an interesting thing in the geometry that you can see right there. When I have that log locked the entire way in the back of the jaw, you see how I can't get the end of the clamp to wrap around it. Now, I'm biting my load. I'm lifting, I'm moving it, but I've stopped the travel now of that claw since I've got it bitten into the log. The other one on my left hand side, that's the whole way around, but I can't close the one here on the right any further.
I have a lot of respect for these guys in going out and doing something that I think is different and brings value to this kind of attachment. There are so many companies out there that make grapples and it seems like all they're doing is the same iteration of the same old tired idea. And I really have a lot of respect for the companies that go out and try new things. There's stuff here I would do differently. I don't think this is the perfect grapple for every person. Where we primarily sold Artillian setups on the smallest subcompacts and stuff normally, because of the added weight of these pieces, this is more of a grapple that's more appropriate on a tractor like my LX. You need a little bit more capable tractor because of the weight of the grapple modules.
Like I said earlier, the added weight of the grapple modules for me, starts to make this modular system not make as much sense. And I think Artillian would nearly have the perfect grapple by taking the technology that they've developed here and putting it into a purpose built grapple. One that respects the skid steer coupler for doing what it does, switching attachments quickly. I don't need the modular nature of this whole thing, but I like what they have going here with the clamps. This definitely does address some of the shortcomings of the traditional two types of grapples that usually tend to be out there. I haven't found anything that this thing hasn't been able to grab really well. I think that part of it is cool. My traditional grapple would really struggle with, say, small branches and that kind of stuff and me dropping things out the sides as I was driving back and forth.
And I love how this thing got into that bamboo and just crunched it down. That's really cool. Huge props to the guys at Artillian for coming out with some awesome technology. I love to see what you guys come out with. I hope there's more iterations of this thing. If you look at this, this could be right on your tractor. Don't take my criticism saying don't buy this product. It's ideal on my tractor here today. I have no issues using it this way, but there's some things here that I would change if I were to continue iterating this product and refining this idea. Nice work. If you guys are shopping for a piece of Artillian equipment, we are a dealer for their products, would be happy to set you up with a grapple setup like this.
I also really like a lot of their accessories. You're going to see the metal basket on the back of my tractor here that sits on their toolbar system, always rides around on the back of my machine. I love to be able to throw my pins and stuff into the back of that big sturdy basket. I also use their work light systems on a lot of my equipment. They're about 249, $259 or so, and are going to come through with a really high quality light and all the nice wiring, loom tubing connectors, and stuff that you need. Again, these guys make a premium product and I'm always impressed by the stuff that they give us in order to try out. If you're shopping for a piece of equipment, we can hook you up with Artillian stuff, or you got parts of service needs for machines you've already got, give us a call at Messick's. We're available at 800-222- 3373 or online at Messicks.com
The popularity of LED lights has become a fantastic thing for adding work lights onto your tractor. If you go back years ago, this was actually surprisingly difficult. A lot of times in order to hold costs down, manufacturers would only put a simple dyno onto their tractor and not an actual alternator, and they didn't have a whole lot of accessory amperage available in order to drive lights. We used to see customers putting four and five lights up on their roll bars and pointing them all different directions to light up the space around their equipment, but then ultimately not having enough amperage production off of the tractor in order to drive all of those lights, and pulling down the engine's electrical system and causing all kinds of problems. With LED lights, though, today that's not so much of an issue anymore. Those halogen lights pulled a lot more current off the tractor than the modern LEDs do, so for the most part, if you're sticking with LED lights, you're not going to have an issue finding ones that are going to suit the electrical capacities of your tractor. But if you're saving some money and you're going back and looking at halogens, you want to be a little bit more careful about sizing the amperage demands of those lights to your machine.
Upgrading your lighting is a common enough practice that there are some kind of ready made kits out there depending on the machine that you might have that makes this easier. We actually stock these LED headlights for Kubota skid steers from a company called Tiger Lights here. You can find these on our website. We'd also have these ones for John Deere and New Holland skid steers, or there's these drop ins. Now there's cases where the manufacturer might offer LED upgrades, but these are going to be drop on options for your machine that are probably going to be a little bit less expensive.
