Ditch Witch
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| Private | |
| Industry | Construction Equipment |
| Founded | Perry, Oklahoma, U.S. (1902) |
| Founder | Edwin Malzahn (July 3, 1921 - December 11, 2015) |
| Headquarters | Perry, Oklahoma, U.S. |
| Products | Trenchers, Directional Drilling Machines |
| Website | DitchWitch.com |
Ditch Witch, a trade name of Charles Machine Works, is an American brand of underground utility construction equipment, which has been in operation since 1949. The company is based in Perry, Oklahoma.
Innovation of Ditch Witch® machines started in the 1940s when a compact trenching machine was created to replace the pick and shovel for installation of underground residential utility services.
The Ditch Witch® organization specializes in the design and manufacture of underground construction equipment. The company is a source for trenchers, vibratory plows, horizontal directional drilling systems, drill pipe, downhole tools, vacuum excavation systems, fluid management systems, and mini skid steers.
In 1902, Carl Frederick Malzahn, a German immigrant seeking to escape the harsh winters of Minnesota, moved his family to Perry, Oklahoma, and opened the Malzahn Blacksmith Shop with his sons, Charlie and Gus. The sons took over the business in 1913 and renamed it Malzahn Brothers' General Blacksmithing.The business prospered, and several years later, with the advent of an oil boom, it began specializing in repairs for the nearby oil fields. After Gus died in 1928, Charlie renamed the business Charlie's Machine Shop, In 1944, Charlie persuaded his son, Edwin "Ed" (July 3, 1921 - December 11, 2015), by then a mechanical engineer, to join the business.
Ed Malzahn learned from his elders the necessity of adapting a business to meet changing demands. In the late 1940s, he began to apply his mechanical engineering knowledge to inventing a device that he believed would be in great demand, once it was produced. At the time, the process of installing residential utility services—electric, gas and plumbing lines—involved slow, tedious pick-and-shovel labor. Malzahn's idea was to create a compact trencher that would dramatically reduce the time and effort of this process. Working together, Ed and his father spent months in the family machine shop creating the prototype of what would be known as the DWP, which stood for Ditch Witch® Power. As described by the ASME, "The DWP used a vertical bucket line with an endless bucket chain to carry off the spoil, ...Small two piece buckets with sharp, finger-like edges were mounted on the vertical chain to gouge out chunks of dirt. The buckets were attached in sequence onto an endless moving chain that carried them down a ladder type mechanism to chew out chunks of soil, then upward to dump the spoil in neat piles on the ground as they began the downward descent to bring up more dirt. A 6-inch wide trench with a digging depth of 30 inches was the goal.
The first production trencher rolled off the assembly line in 1949. Called the "endless conveyor ditch digging machine," It was the first mechanized, compact service-line trencher developed for laying underground water lines between the street main and the house. It was initially marketed for $750 per machine. Before the end of the 1950s, the company bought 160 acres (650,000 m2) of land west of Perry and built a new manufacturing facility. In 1955, Ed Malzahn's endless conveyor ditch digging machine received U.S. Patent No. 2,714,262.
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