excavators

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 (a rotating platform, like a Lazy Susan) 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
• steam shovel
• Bucket-wheel excavator
• Engineering Vehicles
• Skid steer

External links

Major manufacturers

• Link-Belt Excavators: website
• Ammann-Yanmar Excavators
• 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