Earthmoving and Mining Industrial Vehicles
Posted on Jun 03rd 2015
We have compiled a list of equipment that has been designed primarily to move earth and minerals in large projects. One area of surface mining includes giant machines such as drills, electric shovels and giant draglines, some of which have buckets that are capable of moving 160 cubic yards of material in one scoop. Although somewhat smaller than the electric shovel or especially the giant dragline, the mass excavator also fits here, which is basically a large version of the excavator that is used more for mass excavation than for more limited exaction or trenching.
An articulated dump truck has a hinge between the cab and the dump box, but is distinct from semi trailer trucks in that the cab is a permanent fixture, not a separable vehicle. Steering is accomplished via hydraulic rams that pivot the entire cab, rather than rack and pinion steering on the front axle. This vehicle is highly adaptable to rough terrain.
Bulldozers are a powerful tracked piece of equipment and the tracks give them excellent ground hold and mobility through very rough terrain. Wide tracks help distribute the bulldozer’s weight over a large area (decreasing pressure), thus preventing it from sinking in sandy or muddy ground.
Many wheel dozers were developed from wheel loaders by fitting a dozer blade in place of the loader arms and bucket. This adaptation was only a success where the machine was used for light-duty tasks.
The first large rubber-tired dozer suitable for earth¬moving applications were those produced by none other than earthmoving pioneer R.G. LeTourneau, beginning in 1947. He developed four sizes known as the Models A, B, C, and Tournadozers.
A cable tractor is a machine used for pulling cables which either can be an electrical cable for a mine shovel or wire ropes during a shovel rope change.
A dragline excavator is a piece of equipment used in civil engineering and surface mining. In civil engineering the smaller types are used as pile driving rigs. The larger types are used in strip-mining operations to move overburden above coal, and for tar-sand mining. Draglines are amongst the largest mobile equipment ever built on land, and weigh in the vicinity of 2000 metric tonnes, though specimens weighing up to 13,000 metric tonnes have also been constructed.
The purpose of drilling into rock is to provide a “blast hole” into which explosives can be loaded, and detonated to make the site easier to work in. Drill Trucks do this.
Off-road dump trucks are used strictly off-road for mining and heavy dirt hauling jobs. There are two primary forms: rigid frame and articulating frame.
The term ‘dump’ truck is not generally used by the mining industry, or by the manufacturers that build these machines. The more appropriate term for this strictly off road vehicle is “haul truck” and the equivalent European term is ‘dumper’. The classification describes how loaded material is discharged from the dump body and in this case, the load is discharged from the rear.
An off-highway hauler that dumps its load through longitudinal gates in the bottom is the bottom dump wagon.
Track loaders are capable in nearly every task, but master of none as a dozer, excavator, or wheel loader will out perform a track loader under a set of conditions. The ability of a track loader to perform almost every task on a job site is why it remains a part of many companies’ fleets.
A loader is a machine often used in construction, primarily used to load loose material (dirt, snow, feed, gravel, logs, etc.) into or onto another type of machine, such as a dump truck, conveyor belt, feed-hopper, or railcar.
You can always educate yourself about all-terrain vehicles and other motor vehicle technology on the MotorsHiFi site, located on the web at www.motorshifi.com. Here you can go to get your dream vehicle.