Bucyrus RH400 Hydraulic Shovel
Many of the extreme machines on our list have spent time in mines, but only the Bucyrus RH400 has made a cameo in a Michael Bay film. The world's largest hydraulic shovel inspired the vehicle form of the Decepticon Demolishor in the 2009 movie Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen .
When it's not appearing on the silver screen, the RH400 can be found in the Canadian oil sands in Alberta, where this three-story-high behemoth set a production record, excavating 9000 tons of earth in 1 hour. The RH400's shovel can hold up to 94 tons or 57 cubic yards in its shovel, which has what Bucyrus calls a clamshell design that opens at the bottom to empty its payload more quickly. Two 16-cylinder engines combined generate 4400 hp, running the RH400 and its 14 hydraulic pumps, which hold up to 3400 gallons of fluid—enough to fill a small backyard pool.
With an $11 million price tag, it is best to leave as little downtime as possible when working the RH400 in a mine or oil sands. Bucyrus makes that continuous work easier on the driver by including a separate room behind the cab that can be outfitted with a refrigerator and a microwave.
When it's not appearing on the silver screen, the RH400 can be found in the Canadian oil sands in Alberta, where this three-story-high behemoth set a production record, excavating 9000 tons of earth in 1 hour. The RH400's shovel can hold up to 94 tons or 57 cubic yards in its shovel, which has what Bucyrus calls a clamshell design that opens at the bottom to empty its payload more quickly. Two 16-cylinder engines combined generate 4400 hp, running the RH400 and its 14 hydraulic pumps, which hold up to 3400 gallons of fluid—enough to fill a small backyard pool.
With an $11 million price tag, it is best to leave as little downtime as possible when working the RH400 in a mine or oil sands. Bucyrus makes that continuous work easier on the driver by including a separate room behind the cab that can be outfitted with a refrigerator and a microwave.
Takraf Bagger 293 Bucket-Wheel Excavator
While the Bucyrus RH400 was the one to make its star turn in Transformers 2 , the 31-million-pound Bagger 293 might have been the machine better suited for the role of villain in a sci-fi summer blockbuster. This bucket-wheel excavator, the Guinness World Record–holder for largest land vehicle, cuts an intimidating figure at a towering 310 feet tall and 722 feet long. Stationed in the Hambach strip mine in western Germany's Rhineland, Bagger 293 digs for lignite, a low-grade coal used in steam–electric power plants. The Bagger's 71-foot-diameter wheel spins its 18 1452-gallon buckets, scooping up earth that it dumps onto a conveyor belt built into its boom arm. Every day the Bagger moves up to 8.48 million cubic feet of material, enough to fill 96 Olympic-size swimming pools.
Caterpillar 797F
When Caterpillar introduced the 797B in 2002, it entered its class as one of the largest dump trucks in the world; six years later, Caterpillar upped the ante with its 797F, besting its predecessor in both payload capacity and horsepower. The 797F sports a 20-cylinder 4000-hp single-block engine, which bests the 797B by 450 hp. Caterpillar's massive truck also hauls 20 tons more than its earlier incarnation, moving it into the rarefied air of trucks with a 400-ton payload.
Metso Mobile Crusher
As other machines dig and move the material around, mobile crushers make the rubble easier to handle and transport away from a site. One of the largest mobile crushers on the market is Metso's Lokotrak LT160, which can crush up to 1550 tons per hour of rock or concrete and can handle 1-cubic-meter-size boulders. Metso designed the machine with tank-like tracks so it could more easily traverse the rough terrain in quarries and mines, moving around a site to where it's most needed. The nearly 64-foot-long, 11.5-foot-wide, 12.5-foot-tall LT160 has a 27-cubic-yard hopper that feeds into a V-shaped jaw crusher, which uses a moving plate to pulverize rock and concrete against a stationary one, with pieces falling to a conveyor below once they are small enough. With the material now broken down, it makes it easier for trucks like the Caterpillar 797F to haul it away from the site.
I was looking for those huge earth moving machines I've heard about several times in my life-havent found them yet so these also rans will have to do-was your $14-16 million excavator 70 tons or 70 cu yards?