Screening bucket or crusher bucket: which one does your job need?

Screening bucket vs crusher bucket: both go on your excavator, both help you reuse material on site, and people often mention them together. But they do different jobs. This guide explains the difference in plain words and shows which Italdem models go with which excavator weight.

The short answer

• Screening bucket: sorts material by size. Small material falls through, large stones stay inside.
• Crusher bucket: breaks material into smaller pieces.

If your material is mixed but the pieces are not too big, you need a screening bucket. If the pieces are too big, you need a crusher bucket. If you have both problems, you can use both.

What a screening bucket does

A screening bucket has a drum with holes. You scoop up material and the drum turns. Soil, sand and small stones fall through the holes, while bigger stones and rubble stay inside. You then tip out what is left onto a separate pile.

Italdem names jobs such as sorting soil and stones, river stones, waste from demolition, land reclamation and beaches. The sorted material can often be reused on site as fill, so you buy less from the quarry. The screen can be changed: Italdem offers hole sizes from 30 × 30 mm up to 180 × 180 mm.

What a crusher bucket does

A crusher bucket has a moving jaw inside. It breaks stone, concrete, asphalt, and waste from demolition and quarries into smaller pieces, which fall out at the bottom. According to Italdem, the pieces are about 30–130 mm or 30–150 mm, depending on the model. You can use the crushed material as fill on the same job or take it to another site.

Italdem GF crusher buckets and GV screening buckets both work on the same oil line as a hydraulic hammer.

Which one for which job?

• Dug-up soil full of stones: screening bucket. You get clean soil and a pile of stones.
• Concrete from a building you took down: crusher bucket. You get smaller pieces you can use as fill.
• Old asphalt or concrete slabs: crusher bucket.
• Mixed demolition waste: often both. Italdem says a GV screening bucket can be used together with a GF crusher bucket: the crusher bucket breaks the large pieces that stay in the screen.

Pick by excavator weight

Italdem builds each model for a weight class. These are the pairs we suggest:

• Italdem GV 800 screening bucket and Italdem GF 10 crusher bucket for the 7–13 t class. Note that the GF 10 starts at 7.5 t.
• Italdem GV 1500 screening bucket and Italdem GF 20 crusher bucket for 13–18 t.
• For bigger machines: Italdem GF 35 crusher bucket for 20–28 t and Italdem GF 45 crusher bucket for 28–40 t.

For a closer look at one model, read our guide Crusher bucket for 7.5–13 t excavators. You can see all models on our screening buckets and crusher buckets pages.

Before you ask for a quote

Send us the make, model and weight of your excavator, how the attachment is mounted (quick coupler or pin-on), whether the machine already runs a hydraulic hammer, and what material you want to sort or crush. Photos help. We sell to businesses only and send you a written quote.