Excavator
Encyclopedia : E : EX : EXC : Excavator
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 (turntable is a more apt description) atop an undercarriage with tracks or wheels.
Note: the term excavator is sometimes used as a general term for any piece of digging equipment. Tracked excavators are sometimes called trackhoes.
Excavators are used in many roles:
- Digging of trenches, holes, foundations
- Demolition
- General grading/landscaping
- Heavy lift, e.g. lifting and placing of pipes
- River dredging
- Mining, especially, but not only open-pit mining
- Brush cutting with hydraulic attachments
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). The same manufacturer's smallest mini-excavator weighs 1470 kg (3240 lb), has a maximum bucket size of 0.036 m³ (0.048 yd³) and the width of its tracks can be adjusted to 89 cm (35 inches). Another company makes a mini excavator that will fit through a doorway with tracks that can be adjusted to only 70 cm (28 inches) wide.
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.
See also
- Bulldozer
- Caterpillar D9
- Caterpillar D11
- Caterpillar Inc.
- Civil Engineering
- Drag line excavator
- Bucket-wheel excavator
- Engineering Vehicles
- Skid steer
External links
Major manufacturers
- Hitachi Construction Machinery: [website]
- Bobcat Company: [website]
- Caterpillar Inc: [website]
- Komatsu: [website]
- Volvo Construction Equipment: [website]
- Liebherr: [website]
- Daewoo
- Hydrema: [website]
- JCB: [website]
- Kobelco: [website]
- [VRML Simulation of an Excavator, Tower Crane, and Dumptruck]
- Hyundai Heavy Industries: [website]
- Mustang: [website]
- Manitowoc Company: [website]
- Case CE: [website]
- [A list of manufacturers of full-sized excavators (>6 metric tonnes)linked to each manufacturer's contact information, other products manufactured, and North American dealers]
- [A list of manufacturers of mini excavators (<=6 metric tonnes)linked to each manufacturer's contact information, other products manufactured, and North American dealers]
General information
- [See new full-sized excavators (>6 metric tonnes), specifications, and a complete list of manufacturers]
- [See new mini excavators (<=6 metric tonnes), specifications, and a complete list of manufacturers]
- [Results of independent production testing of John Deere's new 350D crawler excavator]
- [Today's technology wrings huge work out of compact (10- to 20-ton) crawler excavators]
- [Configure a Hydraulic Excavator] - from the official Caterpillar website
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