Excavator- Commonly Used Heavy Machinery

Excavators are heavy machinery used in civil engineering and surface mining. An excavator, also called a 360-degree excavator or digger, sometimes abbreviated simply to a 360, is an engineering vehicle consisting of a backhoe and cab mounted on a pivot atop an undercarriage with tracks or wheels. The term excavator is sometimes used as a general term for any piece of digging equipment.

Excavators are used in many roles:

1- Digging of trenches, holes, foundations
2- Demolition
3- General grading/landscaping
4- Heavy lift, e.g. lifting and placing of pipes
5- Mining, especially, but not only open-pit mining

Varieties of Excavators:

Excavators come in a wide variety of sizes. The smaller ones are called a mini-excavator or compact excavator. One manufacturer’s largest model weighs 84,980 kg (187,360 lb) and has a maximum bucket size of 4.5 m³ (5.9 yd³).Often the bucket can be replaced with other tools like a breaker, a grapple or an auger. Excavators are usually employed together with loaders and bulldozers. Most smaller excavators have a small backfill (or dozer-) blade. It’s a horizontal bulldozer like blade attached to the undercarriage and is used for pushing removed material back into a hole.

Examples of Excavators:

1- Compact excavator

A compact hydraulic excavator is a tracked or wheeled vehicle with an approximate operating weight of 6 metric tons (13,228 lbs). It generally includes a standard backfill blade and features independent boom swing. The compact hydraulic excavator is also referred to as a mini excavator.The compact hydraulic excavator is somewhat unique from other construction equipment in that all movement and functions of the machine are accomplished through the transfer of hydraulic fluid.

2- Dragline excavator

Dragline excavation systems are heavy construction equipment used in civil engineering and surface mining. In civil engineering the smaller types are used for road and port construction. The larger types are used in strip-mining operations to extract coal and these are amongst the largest mobile equipment.

3- Bucket-wheel excavator

Bucket-wheel excavators are heavy equipment used in surface mining and civil engineering. The excavation component itself is a large rotating wheel mounted on an arm or boom. On the outer edge of the wheel is a series of scoops or buckets. As the wheel turns, the buckets remove soil or rock from the target area and carry it around to the backside of the wheel, where it falls onto a conveyor, which carries it up the arm toward the main body of the excavator.