Massive Machinery: Part 3
Here at Kompakt we sell small, medium and large bits of recycling machinery, but what we call large machinery, others might disagree. Those others are likely to be aware of some of the massive bits of machinery that are dotted around the world. In this series, we will take a look at such machines and tell you a little bit more about them.
Bagger 293: Giant Bucket Wheel Excavator
The largest machine on Earth (and not under it) is the Bagger 293, one of the most extraordinary accomplishments of human engineering. Get this, it weighs 14,200 tonnes, it’s 96m tall and 225m long. It stole the crown of largest land machine from its sister machine, the Bagger 288, back in 1995.
We specify ‘on land’, because the Hadron Collider in Bern is the largest machine in the world, but it’s underground.
The Bagger is current in a brown coal mine near Hambach, Germany, chewing up a maximum of 8.5 million cubic feet of earth each day. It is owned by REW Power AG, the 2nd largest energy producer in Germany. A machine this size is very hard to move and sometimes its operations can be a bit limited by its poor vision. It has a reputation for accidentally hitting other machines, power lines or roads etc. It’s max speed is less than 1kmh.
The bucket wheel at the end of the crane, which is used to scoop up the earth, is over 21m in diameter. When you think about how big 21m is, that’s truly astounding. The Bagger 293 holds many world records too; too many to list. What we like most is that it is powered by the same coal that it digs the from the ground. In a dark way, that’s ‘sustainable’.
Softpedia describe its operation like this: “For excavation, it uses a very large rotating wheel located at the end of the long arm and a series of buckets on the outer edge of that wheel. With every turn of the wheel, every bucket picks up a big chunk of rock or soil and carries it to the back of the wheel.”
“There, the material falls onto a conveyor belt and is then carried up the arm toward the body of the massive excavator, where more conveyor belts, usually mounted end-to-end, move it to the dumping site.”
Words don’t do it justice. Human, watch video, now.
BERTHA
The SR99 Tunnelling Machine
The SR99 Tunnelling Machine is a the world’s largest tunnel borer, and it’s called Bertha. It’s nearly 100m long, five stories tall and weighs 7,000 tonnes. This enormous beast takes its rightful place in our Massive Machinery series. Bertha is so large that it could swallow the world’s second largest borer.
Bertha has only worked on one tunnel project, and must be dismantled into 31 pieces for transporting to any future project. Within the last few years, Seattle decided to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct, and Bertha was specially built for the job. Whilst doing this job, Bertha encountered one small problem when she stopped cold.
There were all sorts of theories about what was causing Bertha’s issue. Could it be an underground city? Could is be a massive boulder? Could it be a secret underground lair? Nope, it was just an 8-inch diameter steel pipe. Strange.
BELAZ 75710
In Part 2 of our Massive Machinery Series we looked at the Liebherr T 282B, the second largest haul truck in the world. In this part, we look at the largest, the BelAZ.
With a maximum load of 450 tonnes, a height of 8m, a width of 10m and a length of 20m, it is undoubtedly a monster! When empty, the Belaz is 360 tonnes, 360 tonnes of massive Belarusian efficiency.
Like the Liebherr, the Belaz has a hybrid-diesel engine that gives it nearly 14,000lbs of torque, perfect for shifting massive weights of rubble and earth. That amount of torque is more than the equivalent of 16 heavy duty pick up trucks. The turning circle is pretty impressive too, as the wheels turn virtually sideways and all the 67-foot monster of machinery a 65-foot turning circle.
It costs at least £2m for one, so if you’re looking for a machine to help with digging a new Grand Canyon, maybe this could be it!