LEXICONMachine components
Bucket tooth
Also called: Digging tooth, tooth point, bucket tip
A replaceable cast-steel point fitted to the leading edge of an excavator bucket, designed to concentrate breakout force at a small area and to be consumed in service so the bucket itself is not.
What it does
Teeth are sacrificial. They sit on welded adapters along the bucket lip and are held by a pin or locking wedge so they can be changed in the field in minutes. Their purpose is to focus the machine's breakout force into a narrow contact patch — a bucket edge alone would have to displace the whole width of material at once — and to take the abrasion that would otherwise destroy the lip. Profiles vary by ground: sharp penetration tips for hard digging, wide flare tips for loading loose material.
Why it becomes an object
Because a tooth is designed to be consumed, a retired one is almost pure wear record. The original cast profile survives at the root and disappears entirely at the tip, so a single tooth shows both its manufactured geometry and the shape the ground gave it. They are cast from high-carbon alloy steel and heat treated, so they are dense, hard and heavy for their size — a compact object with unusual mass, which is exactly what makes a small tooth work as the base for a side table.
