Laser or GPS? HELP!!!

I own a John Deere 120c excavator and do a lot of basements, Driveways, Shed pads, and Ditching... also a fair amount of culvert work. I am looking at finding a system to eliminate getting out and shooting grade with a rod. Something I can get into for a few grand and that's fairly simple to run. Not sure where to even start. Would like it to be versatile as then I could move it to my d5 dozer as well. any help is appreciated.. I feel lost with all the options.

I'm not sure about GPS but I'm sure it's not cheap. I do know how it's a pain checking your own grade. I would maybe look into the magnetic laser receiver mounts that mount on the blade of a dozer or stick of a excavator. I haven't acutally used them myself but I remember seeing them when researching lasers. Might be worth looking into?

A friend that has an excavating business has the magnetic mounts for his dozer, they work great, they work with the same laser he uses a stick for, so you only have to buy the magnetic mounts for the dozer...he used it to grade gravel inside on of my barns and was almost spot on when done...it sure beat chasing around with the stick in hand checking grade... here is a link for the magnetic mounting poles...you just need the laser, any rotory laser would work http://www.lewiscontractorsales.com...oduct_Code=T19357&Category_Code=spectralasers

Twisted, you want to take this one? Doesn't sound like a perfect candidate for a LR60 on the bucket, but he's not getting into Exca-vision for any less than $10k. He will still need the laser and receiver to bench the Exca-vision, not to mention can't move it to the dozer. A few grand to spend? GPS is completely out of the question.

Welll..... Lots of options and lots of opinions out there so take mine for what they are. I've started off cheap then went up from there. I can't justify a $30k+ GPS system while using a $30K excavator. 1- Get a dual grade laser. Spectra 422-722. Up to you. 2- Get a mounted receiver. I started with a CR600 and now have a couple LR60's. I've had good luck with the cheapos but I'm finishing many more feet/hr with the LR60. The LR60 paid for itself in the first week. 3- Get a powered parachute. Wait....... Nevermind. But you'll make enough money buying the right equipment and using it correctly to buy more toys/tools. Good Luck!

Thanks guys for all your opinions... I have looked into that exca vision and it seems like it would be suitable... but I'm not sure I can go that far on price... then again maybe if I spend the money now I can use it longer... I'm 28. Have a lot of years left to do this stuff and am hoping to stick around awhile haha. My exc. Is a 06 and my dozer is a 05. Both in the 3000 hour range... so its stuff i can hang onto and not have to upgrade right away... which has me thinking maybe spending more on a system could be an option... I'll look into the wireless receivers... I've just read they are slow and tour bucket needs to be set at the same exact spot all the time to check... maybe it's not as bad as I'm envisioning... I don't know. That's why I'm glad you all have expressed opinions... any other ideas or thoughts let me know.. thanks again. Tom

I set up my LR60 to always read the cutting edge, +/- about 30* of bucket curl anyway. It's pretty simple and zero delay.

You mount that right on the bucket then? Or on the boom?

We mount them directly on the bucket. Twisted has his a little different than mine, but I have a tilt bucket. This is mine.

My mast is also on the bucket. Imagine looking down the top of the mast. It points directly at the front of the cutting edge. By using the angle compensating feature of the LR60 I'm always reading my edge rather than trying to guess if my bucket is in the ditch the same way. It really opens up the reach by not having it mounted to the stick and is considerably more accurate.

I'm not really qualified to offer much help here but I will put my 2 cents in. Laser is a pretty good way to go and with some creative engineering almost anything can be made to work. In the farming world, GPS and auto steer is as common as an old shoe. Something we have to deal with is GPS signal drift which can vary widely from one day to the next and one end of the field to another. To remedy the problem we have a fixed ground network enabling RTK. With RTK/GPS we are spot on from one day to the next and season after season. The short story is your signal and accuracy will vary throughout the day and change significantly overnight without RTK. To the question: Almost all of the guys installing field tile around here use laser exclusively. One pretty creative tile guy rigged a laser receiver with a wireless "cab cam" focused on it so he could easily see what the laser receiver is reading.