Excavators are heavy construction equipment primarily consisting of a boom, dipper, bucket and cab on a rotating platform known as the "house" - although the largest form ever, the dragline excavator, eliminated the dipper in favor of a line and winch.
A loader is a heavy equipment machine used in construction to move or load materials such as soil, rock, sand, demolition debris, etc. into or onto another type of machinery.
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size for most of the 20th century, first becoming challenged by more efficient rotary excavators in the 1950s, then superseded by them on the upper end from the 1970s on.
Komatsu Ltd. or Komatsu (コマツ) is a Japanese multinational corporation that manufactures construction, mining, forestry and military equipment, as well as diesel engines and industrial equipment like press machines, lasers and thermoelectric generators. Its headquarters are in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. The corporation was named after the city of Komatsu, Ishikawa Prefecture, where the company was founded in 1921. Worldwide, the Komatsu Group consists of Komatsu Ltd. and 258 other companies.
A steam shovel is a large steam-powered excavating machine designed for lifting and moving material such as rock and soil. It is the earliest type of power shovel or excavator. Steam shovels played a major role in public works in the 19th and early 20th century, being key to the construction of railroads and the Panama Canal. The development of simpler, cheaper diesel, gasoline and electric shovels caused steam shovels to fall out of favor in the 1930s.
Big Brutus is the nickname of the Bucyrus-Erie model 1850-B electric shovel, which was the second largest of its type in operation in the 1960s and 1970s. Big Brutus is the centerpiece of a mining museum in West Mineral, Kansas, United States, where it was used in coal strip mining operations. The shovel was designed to dig from 20 to 69 feet down to unearth relatively shallow coal seams, which would then be mined with smaller equipment.
The Silver Spade was a giant power shovel used for strip mining in southeastern Ohio. Manufactured by Bucyrus-Erie, South Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the model 1950-B was one of two of this model built, the other being its sister ship, the GEM of Egypt. Its sole function was to remove the earth and rock overburden from the coal seam. Attempts to purchase and preserve the shovel from Consol to make it the centerpiece of a mining museum exhibit for $2.6 million fell short. A salvage company began scrapping the machine in January 2009. The boom was dropped using explosives on February 9th, ending any rescue attempts. By March 1st, much of the machine had been cut away.
A bucket-wheel excavator (BWE) is a large heavy equipment machine used in surface mining.
Marion Power Shovel Company was an American firm that designed, manufactured and sold steam shovels, power shovels, blast hole drills, excavators, and dragline excavators for use in the construction and mining industries. The company was a major supplier of steam shovels for the construction of the Panama Canal. The company also built the two crawler-transporters used by NASA for transporting the Saturn V rocket and later the Space Shuttle to their launch pads. The company's shovels played a major role in excavation for Hoover Dam, the Holland Tunnel and the extension of the Number 7 subway line to Main Street in Flushing, Queens.
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.
Heavy Engineering Corporation Limited or HECL is a Public Sector Undertaking (PSU) in Ranchi, Jharkhand, India. HECL was established in the year 1958 as one of the largest Integrated Engineering Complex in India. It manufactures and supplies capital equipments & machineries and renders project execution required for core sector industries. It has complete manufacturing set up starting from casting & forging, fabrication, machining, assembly and testing - all at one location, Ranchi, backed by a strong design - engineering and technology team.
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.
Uralmash is a heavy machine production business of the Russian engineering corporation OMZ. Its facility is located in Yekaterinburg, Russia, and it is reported to employ around 16,500 people. The surrounding residential area where workers live is also called Uralmash.
A power shovel, also known as a motor shovel, stripping shovel, front shovel, mining shovel or rope shovel, is a bucket-equipped machine usually powered by steam, diesel fuel, gasoline or electricity and used for digging and loading earth or fragmented rock and for mineral extraction. Power shovels are a type of rope/cable excavator, where the digging arm is controlled and powered by winches and steel ropes, rather than hydraulics like in the modern hydraulic excavators. Basic parts of a power shovel include the track system, cabin, cables, rack, stick, boom foot-pin, saddle block, boom, boom point sheaves and bucket. The size of bucket varies from 0.73 to 53 cubic meters.
Mitsui & Co., Ltd. is one of the largest sogo shosha in Japan; it is part of the Mitsui Group.
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 Marion Steam Shovel, also known as the Le Roy Steam Shovel, is a historic Model 91 steam shovel manufactured by the Marion Steam Shovel and Dredge Company of Marion, Ohio. It is located on Gulf Road in the Town of Le Roy, New York, United States.
Joy Global Inc. was a company that manufactured and serviced heavy equipment used in the extraction and haulage of coal and minerals in both underground and surface mining. The company had manufacturing facilities in Alabama, Pennsylvania, Texas, Wisconsin, Australia, Canada, China, France, South Africa, Poland and the United Kingdom. In 2017, Joy Global was acquired by Komatsu Limited and was renamed Komatsu Mining Corp.
Henry Harnischfeger was a pioneer in the Milwaukee, Wisconsin, mining industry.
