Material handling bucket

In a material handling bucket having generally vertical sides end capping a generally hyperbolic shaped bucket bowl, a transverse channel member means externally mounted to an upper forward edge of the bucket bowl for reinforcing the edge, two pairs of symetrically positioned outboard bucket bowl reinforcement ribs having boom arm pin bearing mounting means for pivotally mounting the bucket to a pair of vertical swingable boom arms, at least one pair of inboard bucket bowl reinforcement ribs having bucket tilting link pin bearing mounting means for pivotally mounting a hydraulic ram powered bucket tilting link to the bucket on a transverse link pin axis parallel to and above the boom pin axis, the three pairs of bucket bowl reinforcement ribs extending on parallel planes and transversely uniformly spaced-apart between the vertical sides of bucket bowl reinforcement ribs having upper terminal end portions mounted to the channel member means;

• and, wherein the improvement comprises:
• an oblong stress distributing plate means having at least one portion of reduced cross-sectional area defining at least one stress concentration point offset toward an upper longer side of the plate means from a predetermined midpoint of the plate means and having a lower longer side symetrically connected to the upper terminal end portions of the inboard pair of bucket bowl reinforcement ribs and to the channel member means for distributing stresses transversely across the plate means transmitted to the stress concentration point from the upper terminal end portions acting upon the channel member means in response to operation of the hydraulic ram powered bucket tilting link;
• said stress distributing plate means is generally elliptical in shape, and said portion of reduced cross-sectional area is a circular hole centered on the ordinate or minor axis of the ellipse and is spaced upwardly toward an upper longer curved side of the generally elliptical shaped stress distributing plate means from the abscissa or major axis of the ellipse;
• and connecting means are provided in a lower longer curved side of the generally elliptical shaped stress distributing plate means for mounting the terminal end portions thereto.