The main purpose of the Rooter is as follows: clearing the construction right-of-way of boulders and roots, uprooting stumps, removing brush and trunks that have been cut with a brush cutter, raking limbs and deadwood.
Rooters can also be used for loosening dense soils and felling trees. Modernized uprooters are attachments to caterpillar tractors, sometimes such equipment is found for Liebherr LTM series truck cranes. Rooters can be either rear-mounted or front-mounted. The drive of the working body can be hydraulic or rope. The moldboard is the working tool of the rotary rake, which is equipped with special curved teeth. The moldboard can be mounted on the pushing frame by means of two schemes: flexible, which has the ability to rotate relative to the frame in the vertical plane, and rigid, which has no ability to make turns in the vertical plane.
It is very difficult to determine the productivity of the rotary rake using formulas due to the lack of data on many factors. The operating capacity of the rotary rake during the clearing of small trees is determined by a formula similar to the one used to determine the capacity of brush cutters. The type of work to be done determines the technological scheme of the uprooter. For uprooting stumps with a diameter of 200 to 500 mm the following method is used: the teeth of the blade of the uprooter are buried in the stump at 150-200 mm and during the movement of the machine in 1 gear turn simultaneously the blade in the vertical plane and together with the root system uproot the stump.
In the case of the blade design and the flexible design itself, the uprooting of stones and stumps can be carried out not only by lifting the pushing frame and tractor traction, but also by turning the blade in the vertical plane. Rooters with rear-mounted implement may have design differences, consisting of the following: two massive double-shoulder arms and a frame are mounted on the rear axle, to which the vertical legs of the pushing frame in the form of a trapezoid are attached. The levers are rigidly connected to each other and are mounted on a common axis of the push frame, against which they can be rotated by hydraulic or rope drives. The movement of tractors with a rear position of the implement is carried out by means of reverse drive.
Stumps with larger diameter (250-300 mm) are removed by two consecutive operations. First, the stump is rocked or dumped (the tines should rest on the stump at a distance of 200-250 mm), then, having buried the tines under the stump in the ground, the machine moves forward and simultaneously lifts the blade to uproot it. If it is necessary to uproot large stumps with a powerful root system, it is necessary to cut the roots in advance. Large boulders are removed in the same way. Trees can also be felled with the help of the uprooter. In the process of felling trees, the movement pattern of the uprooter is designed in such a way that the uprooted trees do not interfere with the subsequent removal of the uprooted mass to the place of its storage.
