Excavator generator Pro

A tracked digger with a turning house and a boom, stick and bucket on pins.

Open Excavator in the app Pro generator: explore its settings in the app; cut files come with the Pro plan (coming soon).

A laser-cut tracked excavator with its boom, stick and bucket raised

In short: Tracked digger with a house that turns on the tracks and a boom, stick and bucket on pins, so it can be posed. Checked for collisions through the whole range of motion. No input drawing needed.

A posable excavator: the house turns on the tracks, and the boom, stick and bucket swing on dowel pins, so it can dig, reach and dump on a desk or in a sandpit. No input drawing is needed; everything scales from the track length you choose.

The tracks are glued up from several plates, the outermost engraved with shoes, sprocket, idler and rollers. The chassis sits between them on tab-and-slot crossmembers, and the house turns on a collar.

What makes it different from a drawing found online: the design is checked for overlaps not only at rest but through every joint's range of motion. The 3D preview has a slider per joint and can ghost the arm across its whole range, so you can see how far it reaches before you cut a single part.

You need: plywood, dowel for the pins, and glue. It pairs with the dump truck for a construction set.

Settings

All of these can be changed in the app, and the 3D preview updates as you type. The name under each setting is its key in a share link, e.g. https://laserpuzzle.app/app/#/excavator?preset=…; a link only needs the settings that differ from the defaults.

Excavator

Setting	Default	What it does
Type `preset`	standard	Arm proportions: standard, mini (short arm) or long reach (long boom and stick). Options: standard, mini, long-reach.
Track length `size`	120 mm	Length of the tracks; everything else scales with it. 120 mm makes a model about 21 cm long. From 80 to 400 mm.
Bucket width `bucket_width`	0 mm	0 = from the size. Rounded to an even number of sheet layers. From 0 to 200 mm.
Track layers `track_layers`	2	Plates glued together per track: more = wider, sturdier tracks. From 1 to 3.
Cab windows `cab_windows`	cut	Options: cut, engrave, none.
Engraved details `details`	on	Track shoes and wheels, engine louvres, cab door.

Pins

Setting	Default	What it does
Pin diameter `pin_diameter`	4 mm	Measured diameter of the dowel or rod used for every pin. From 2 to 10 mm.
Press-fit hole offset `press_fit`	-0.1 mm	Hole = pin + this, where a pin is fixed. Find it with the fit-test hole strip. From -1 to 1 mm.
Pivot hole offset `pivot_fit`	0.05 mm	Hole = pin + this, where a part turns. Small = stiff, holds its pose; larger = swings freely. From -0.5 to 1 mm.

Plus the material and machine settings every generator has: material thickness, kerf, slot clearance, sheet width, sheet height, part spacing, engrave part labels, cut line colour, engrave line colour.

Related generators

A laser-cut wheel loader with laminated wheels and a raised bucket

Pro

Excavator generator Pro

Settings

Excavator

Pins

Related generators

Wheel loader

Dump truck

Truck crane