Excavators are heavy construction equipment primarily consisting of a boom, dipper, bucket, and cab on a rotating platform known as the "house".
Heavy equipment, heavy machinery, earthmovers, construction vehicles, or construction equipment, refers to heavy-duty vehicles specially designed to execute construction tasks, most frequently involving earthwork operations or other large construction tasks. Heavy equipment usually comprises five equipment systems: the implement, traction, structure, power train, and control/information.
A dragline excavator is a heavy-duty excavator used in civil engineering and surface mining. It was invented in 1904, and presented an immediate challenge to the steam shovel and its diesel and electric powered descendant, the power shovel. Much more efficient than even the largest of the latter, it enjoyed a heyday in extreme size for most of the 20th century, first becoming challenged by more efficient rotary excavators in the 1950s, then superseded by them on the upper end from the 1970s on.
Bagger 288, previously known as the MAN TAKRAF RB288 built by the German company Krupp for the energy and mining firm Rheinbraun, is a bucket-wheel excavator or mobile strip mining machine.
A bucket-wheel excavator (BWE) is a large heavy equipment machine used in surface mining.
Big Muskie was a dragline excavator built by Bucyrus-Erie and owned by the Central Ohio Coal Company, weighing 13,500 short tons (12,200 t) and standing nearly 22 stories tall. It mined coal in the U.S. state of Ohio from 1969 to 1991. It was dismantled and sold for scrap in 1999.
A landship is a large land vehicle that travels exclusively on land. Its name is meant to distinguish it from vehicles that travel through other mediums such as conventional ships, airships, and spaceships.
Bucyrus-Erie was an American surface and underground mining equipment company. It was founded as Bucyrus Foundry and Manufacturing Company in Bucyrus, Ohio, in 1880. Bucyrus moved its headquarters to South Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1893. In 1927, Bucyrus merged with the Erie Steam Shovel Company to form Bucyrus-Erie. In 1997, it was renamed Bucyrus International, Inc. In 2010 the enterprise was purchased by Caterpillar in a US$7.6 billion transaction that closed on July 8, 2011. At the time of its acquisition, the Bucyrus product line included a range of material removal and material handling products used in both surface and underground mining.
TAKRAF Group (“TAKRAF”), is a global German industrial company. Through its brands, TAKRAF and DELKOR, the Group provides equipment, systems and services to the mining and associated industries.
The Landkreuzer P 1500 Monster was a purported German pre-prototype super-heavy self-propelled gun designed during World War II. While it is mentioned in a number of popular works about World War II projects, there is no solid documentation for the program’s existence, and it may have only been a semi-serious proposal, or even an outright hoax, much like the Panzer IX and Panzer X.
F60 is the series designation of five overburden conveyor bridges used in brown coal (lignite) opencast mining in the Lusatian coalfields in Germany. They were built by the former Volkseigener Betrieb TAKRAF in Lauchhammer and are the largest movable technical industrial machines in the world. As overburden conveyor bridges, they transport the overburden which lies over the coal seam. The cutting height is 60 m (200 ft), hence the name F60. In total, the F60 is up to 80 m (260 ft) high and 240 m (790 ft) wide; with a length of 502 m (1,647 ft), it is described as the lying Eiffel Tower, making these behemoths not only the longest vehicle ever made—beating Prelude FLNG, the longest ship—but the largest vehicle by physical dimensions ever made by humankind. In operating condition, it weighs 13,600 metric tons making the F60 also one of the heaviest land vehicles ever made, beaten only by Bagger 293, which is a giant bucket-wheel excavator. Nevertheless, despite its immense size, it is operated by only a crew of 14. The first conveyor bridge was built from 1969 to 1972, being equipped with a feeder bridge in 1977. The second was built from 1972 to 1974, having been equipped with a feeder bridge during construction. The third conveyor bridge was built from 1976 to 1978, being provided with a feeder bridge in 1985. The fourth and fifth conveyor bridges were built 1986–1988 and 1988–1991 respectively. There are still four F60s in operation in the Lusatian coalfields today: in the brown coal opencast mines in Jänschwalde, Welzow-Süd, Nochten and Reichwalde. The fifth F60, the last one built, is in Lichterfeld-Schacksdorf and is accessible to visitors.
Marion 6360, also known as The Captain, was a giant power shovel built by the Marion Power Shovel company. Completed and commissioned on October 15 1965, it was one of the largest land vehicles ever built, exceeded only by some dragline and bucket-wheel excavators. The shovel originally started work with Southwestern Illinois Coal Corporation, but the owners were soon bought out by Arch Coal. Everything remained the same at the mine except for the colors which were changed to red, white, and blue. Like most mining vehicles of extreme size, Marion 6360 only required a surprisingly small amount of men to operate, a total of four consisting of a operator, oiler, welder, and a ground man who looked after the trailing cable.
The Ursa Major at Black Thunder Coal Mine, Wyoming, is the largest dragline excavator currently in use in North America and the third largest ever built. It is a Bucyrus-Erie 2570WS model and cost US$50 million. The Ursa Major was one of five large walking draglines operated at Black Thunder, with the next two largest in the dragline fleet being Thor, a B-E 1570W - which has a 97.5-metre (320 ft) boom and a 69-cubic-metre (2,400 cu ft) bucket - and Walking Stick, a B-E 1300W with a 92-metre (302 ft) boom and a 34-cubic-metre (1,200 cu ft) bucket.
The Tagebau Hambach is a large open-pit coal mine in Niederzier and Elsdorf, North Rhine–Westphalia, Germany. It is operated by RWE and used for mining lignite.
A bucket chain excavator (BCE) is a piece of heavy equipment used in surface mining and dredging. BCEs use buckets on a revolving chain to remove large quantities of material. They are similar to bucket-wheel excavators and trenchers. Bucket chain excavators remove material from below their plane of movement, which is useful if the pit floor is unstable or underwater.
A conveyor bridge is a piece of mining equipment used in strip mining for the removal of overburden and for dumping it on the inner spoil bank of the open-cut mine. It is used together with multibucket excavators, frequently bucket chain excavators, that remove the overburden which is moved to the bridge by connecting conveyors. Conveyor bridges are used in working horizontally layered deposits with soft overburden rock in areas where mean annual temperatures are above freezing. They are frequently used in lignite mining.
Bagger 1473 is a Type SRs 1500-series bucket-wheel excavator prototype left abandoned in a field in the municipality of Schipkau in Germany.
The Type SRs 8000 or less commonly known as the SRs 8000-class, is a family of bucket-wheel excavators known for being one of the largest terrestrial vehicles ever made by man, with Bagger 293 its - "lead vessel" - being the largest ground vehicle in history. The Type SRs 8000 classification was coined by TAKRAF to describe specifically, Bagger 293, although it is unclear if this extends to its other "sibling vehicles" within the same bulk.
The Type Es 3750 or simply the Es 3750 is a series of bucket chain excavators built by TAKRAF and used in Germany. According to TAKRAF, they boast that the Type Es 3750 is the largest bucket chain excavators in the world. Type Es 3750s are notable for being always used in conjunction with the Overburden Conveyor Bridge F60, another absurdly large land vehicle.
The Type SRs 2000 is a class of medium-sized bucket-wheel excavators built by TAKRAF. It is by far, one of the most common and recognizable BWEs built and sold by TAKRAF, with 56 Type SRs 2000s being commissioned and launched as of 2013.
