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Quick answer: A custom undercarriage is selected in five steps: establish the machine's weight distribution, compute ground pressure against the target terrain, confirm the interface geometry in drawing form, choose the drive architecture, and match the track chain to the duty cycle. MAGEON engineers run this calculation for every custom crawler undercarriage project and supply the working before production starts.
Selecting a custom undercarriage is rarely a catalogue decision. For an OEM designing a new machine, or an equipment builder retrofitting an existing platform, the undercarriage sets the limits of everything else: how much the machine can lift, how steep a slope it can climb, how long it can work between maintenance windows, and whether the machine can legally be sold into a given market. Getting it wrong is expensive in both directions — an over-specified chassis inflates machine cost and weight, an under-specified one brings warranty claims and field failures.
This guide lays out the framework MAGEON engineering teams use when a customer asks us to build a custom undercarriage. It is deliberately ordered the way you should work through it.
Step 1 — Establish the true machine weight distribution
Before any chassis is drawn, we need the machine's weight split across the front and rear support points, including the maximum and minimum configurations. A 20-ton machine with a counterweight at the tail and the engine at the front does not load its undercarriage the same way as a machine with a different layout.
Three figures matter: empty machine weight, fully loaded working weight, and the weight at the extreme of the working envelope (for example, a boom extended to maximum radius). The third is often the one that determines whether the chassis is adequate, and it is the one most often missing from a customer enquiry.
Step 2 — Compute the ground pressure and confirm it suits the terrain
Ground pressure is the single most useful number for judging whether a machine will work in soft ground, and it takes ten seconds to calculate:
Ground pressure (kPa) = Machine weight (kg) × 9.81 ÷ Total contact area (m²)
Contact area is the combined footprint of the tracks actually touching the ground. The mistake that gets made repeatedly is dividing by total track length rather than the length in contact under load. As a working reference, MAGEON uses these bands when advising customers:
| Surface | Target ground pressure | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Hard rock, paved yard | Any | No limit; traction and stability dominate |
| Compacted soil, quarry floor | Under 120 kPa | Standard customized steel track chassis is sufficient |
| Soft clay, wet farmland | Under 60 kPa | Customized rubber track chassis or a widened steel track |
| Marsh, beach, sand | Under 35 kPa | Rubber track chassis, wide pads, low ground pressure design |
A custom undercarriage is very often specified specifically to bring this number down. Widening the track shoes is the cheapest lever; changing the whole chassis architecture is the most effective one.
Step 3 — Confirm the interface geometry
The mounting interface between the machine and the chassis is where custom projects most often stall. You need to agree, in drawing form, the following before anyone starts cutting steel:
- Bolting pattern: number of bolts, thread diameter, and the pitch circle diameter
- Flange or plate thickness, and the flatness tolerance over the mounting face
- Centre height of the interface relative to the ground plane
- Hydraulic connections: port type, thread, and hose routing clearance
- Drive interface: motor type, displacement, mounting flange, and rotation direction
MAGEON accepts DXF, DWG and PDF drawings, and issues a 3D model plus an interface confirmation drawing for sign-off before production. That sign-off step is the cheapest insurance in the entire process, because it is where a millimetre of misunderstanding becomes a scrapped frame.
Step 4 — Select the drive and control architecture
Most modern crawler undercarriages use hydraulic motor drives because they offer the best packaging, the steadiest low-speed torque, and simple proportional control. But three architectures remain in real use:
Hydraulic motor drive — the mainstream choice. Compact, efficient, easy to integrate with the machine's hydraulic system, and the easiest to service because the motor can be exchanged without disturbing the frame.
Mechanical drive — lower cost and mechanically simple, but limited speed control and less flexibility when the operating pattern changes.
Electro-mechanical drive — used on battery-electric and hybrid platforms where the machine's power source is electrical. Torque characteristics and thermal management differ enough that this needs a dedicated engineering approach rather than a straight swap.
Step 5 — Match the track chain to the duty cycle
The final variable is how the machine is actually used. A dragline working twelve-hour shifts in abrasive rock needs a different chain pitch and shoe profile from a compact crawler undercarriage on a utility machine that moves twice a day. Specify the duty cycle, not just the maximum load: hours per day, ground abrasiveness, and how often the machine transits.
Questions to ask your undercarriage supplier
Before you accept a quotation, put these to the supplier in writing. The answers should be specific, not marketing language:
- What is the rated load capacity of the chassis at the specified configuration, and what safety factor is applied?
- What is the ground pressure of the proposed configuration on the stated machine weight?
- Which frame fabrication and heat treatment route is used, and what welding procedure qualification is on file?
- What is the expected service life of the track chain under the stated duty cycle?
- Which parts are held in stock, and what is the lead time for non-standard parts?
- What inspection records are supplied with the finished chassis?
MAGEON supplies per-chassis inspection records, material certificates, and welding procedure documentation, and holds common wear parts in stock for the models we build most often. Our 1-set MOQ policy means you can validate the design on a single sample before committing to a production run.
Summary
A custom undercarriage is a system decision, not a part decision. Work through weight distribution, ground pressure, interface geometry, drive architecture and duty cycle in that order, and you will reach a specification that an engineering team can actually build and a supplier can actually quote. If any of the five steps is skipped, the undercarriage will be the component that determines how disappointed the machine owner is eighteen months after delivery.
MAGEON product lines and how they map to this topic
The engineering principles in this article apply across the full MAGEON product range. Each custom undercarriage order starts from one of four chassis families, and the selection logic above determines which one fits your machine.
| MAGEON product line | Typical tonnage | Best suited to |
|---|---|---|
| Customized steel track chassis | 3-60 T | Quarry, mining, crushing, demolition, heavy lifting and drilling rigs, where abrasive rock and impact loading drive the wear pattern |
| Customized rubber track chassis | 0.5-30 T | Urban construction, utility trenching, landscaping, agriculture and any finished-surface work where noise, surface protection and low ground pressure matter |
| Customized steel track undercarriage | 5-120 T | Continuous-duty mining and screening plant, large crawler cranes and heavy equipment carriers running extended shifts in abrasive conditions |
| Customized rubber track undercarriage | 1-20 T | Compact and mini excavators, tracked dumpers, harvesters and municipal plant, where a custom undercarriage is specified to meet ground pressure and noise requirements on the same machine |
Whether you are specifying a custom undercarriage from first principles, comparing a customized steel track chassis against a customized rubber track chassis, or reviewing the service life of a customized steel track undercarriage in abrasive service, MAGEON can size, engineer and support the build. Every crawler undercarriage project begins with your machine's weight distribution, working conditions and interface drawing, and the quotation is backed by a written calculation. Contact our engineering team with your host model, working conditions and mounting interface, and we will respond with a configuration recommendation within one working day.