How ESCO Vertasys is advancing ground engaging tool design

Ground-engaging tools (GET) operate at the front line of excavation and loading, absorbing the abrasion and impact associated with moving material. As sacrificial wear components, bucket teeth are designed to be replaced. But while wear life remains an important measure of performance, manufacturers are now looking beyond durability.

Contractors are under pressure to maximize machine utilization, reduce maintenance downtime, and improve job site safety.

With its new Vertasys tooth system, ESCO is evolving wear-part design to address these pressures.

Developed over five years and validated through extensive analytical, laboratory, and field testing, the system is designed to improve wear life while simplifying maintenance and reducing the operational disruptions associated with tooth replacement.

"We are critically focused on making sure these teeth last as long as possible," says Casey Springer, senior director of product development at ESCO. "We are reducing the number of maintenance intervals that our customers are subjected to so that machines can stay active in digging as opposed to [being] down for preventive maintenance."

Longer tooth life increases uptime 

For contractors, wear parts are often evaluated based on how long they last in service.

Longer-lasting teeth reduce replacement frequency, minimize planned maintenance events, and help keep equipment productive.

According to Springer, the Vertasys system is the next-generation successor to ESCO's Ultralok system. Although Ultralok continues to be manufactured and supported by ESCO, the company is encouraging customers to adopt the Vertasys system, which incorporates a stronger nose design allowing engineers to reduce the size of the nose and allocate more wear material into the tooth itself. The result is a longer-lasting tooth that doesn't sacrifice reliability.

Compared to its Ultralok system, ESCO reports a 10 to 12 percent increase in tooth life. That may seem incremental, but across a fleet operating in abrasive applications, even modest improvements can reduce the number of maintenance intervals required over the course of a year.

The development process behind those gains was extensive. During the first year of the program, ESCO benchmarked its own legacy systems, evaluated competing products, and gathered customer feedback. The company then generated dozens of design concepts before narrowing the field and conducting laboratory and field testing.

"This system [has] over 20,000 hours of field trial under its belt across 10 different sites, and a variety of different applications from super cold in [Atlantic] Canada to blazing hot in Arizona," says Springer. "So we've really vetted this across the depth and breadth of the types of applications that our customers are likely to encounter."

Better tooth design improves maintenance and safety

The improved tooth design is not only about extending component life to reduce downtime. It is also about making maintenance events faster, simpler, and safer when they do occur.

Routine tooth replacement can require workers to release locks and remove worn components from large buckets, often in tight spaces between adapters. In those conditions, tool control matters. As a result, serviceability has become an important part of GET design, with manufacturers looking at tool access, ergonomics, and the number of steps required during routine replacement.

Springer says ESCO moved away from the pry bar used with its Ultralok system because pry bars can slip during service, creating a safety risk for the person working on the bucket. Instead, Vertasys incorporates a vertically accessible locking system that replaces the traditional pry-bar-style servicing methods with a hex tool designed to improve control during tooth changes. The system also integrates the lock directly into the tooth, reducing the number of separate components that must be managed during maintenance.

According to Springer, minimizing maintenance interactions was a key objective during development. "[Vertasys] reduces the number of touch points that an operator or maintenance personnel needs to engage with the tooth system, and each one of those is a potential for injury."

Engineered for the entire GET life cycle

The development of Vertasys reflects a broader shift in how GET systems are engineered.

Throughout the five-year process, engineers evaluated not only wear performance and structural durability, but also how customers interact with the system throughout its life cycle. That included service procedures, lock accessibility, fit and retention characteristics, and overall ease of maintenance.

The result is a product designed to balance durability, reliability, and usability.

That same philosophy extends beyond the contractor. ESCO also redesigned portions of the adapter system to simplify inventory management for dealers and reduce fabrication time for bucket manufacturers. Standardized adapter configurations can reduce inventory requirements, while revised weld geometries are intended to streamline bucket production and better accommodate robotic welding processes.

Those changes reflect a growing recognition that productivity improvements can occur throughout the equipment value chain, not just on the job site. For ESCO, the goal was to create measurable value for everyone involved in the system.

"We're really trying to make sure that there's adequate incremental value for end customers, dealers, and bucket manufacturers," says Springer. 

This article originally appeared in the September 2026 issue of Heavy Equipment Guide.