I was wondering if anyone here had experience or has used one? Any thoughts?

All I have heard is that they were to much stress on the tractors frame and went through teeth like changing socks.

Yeah we run an xentric ripper on a Hitachi 650 LC-3 excavator. It is unreal the stress and fatigue that it puts on the machine. It's on the third full machine wiring harness in less then 4000 hours. The vibrations it puts into the machine are unreal. It work hardens the copper and makes it brittle. As soon as you try to repair the harness and flex it a bit the wires just brake off. That is just the cheap stuff that it does to the machine. I don't have enough time and space here to tell the whole story. It also goes through teeth like a kid eats smarties. I didn't think an impact ripper would be any better. I have seen pictures of them but never seen one. I don't imagine there were too many out there.

Yup they vibrate. Not sure of the pulses per minute. But it is up there. You can change the hydraulic flow but it does not make a notable improvement.

Yup it sits on a tailed hinge frame that has a 24" diameter airbag in between the coupler frame and shank assembly

Hers a vid from you tube.

Hi Team,
from what I recall and what we were led to believe back in the day, the Impact Ripper was primarily designed and fitted to the larger Cat TTT machines for use in sensitive urban areas where blasting was considered inappropriate.

I believe a lot of them were used over here to rip the sandstone during construction of some of Sydney and Brisbane Australia's freeways with success.

It was expected that machine and component life would be compromised but as said above it was a costly viable alternative but not suitable for all rock types.

Deas may have more to add on these jiggers.
Cheers,
Eddie B.

Hi, edb.
I don't have much to add. Hydraulic hammers give excavators a hard time and a vibrating ripper is really only a hydraulic hammer in ripper form. They both do have their applications, mostly in situations where blasting would not be appropriate.

Another approach is drilling and filling the holes with Expandite - which is also costly. Expando and Dexpan are other brand names. In this video, you can sometimes see the holes into which the fracturing agent, in this case, Expando, was placed.

To the best of my knowledge, there is no 'cheap' way to deal with rock.

I understand that Cat gave away building vibrating rippers 'cos they were so hard on the tractors.

Just my 0.02.