The Rapid Excavator is a rapid earthworks excavator that utilizes a cleated track to rapidly and cleanly remove earth for mining and construction purposes and sees some application in quarries and landscaping . In it's mobile mode it looks like a truck sized wedge with wheels carrying a huge crawler track. This unit drives itself to the edge of where an excavation is needed. Here the wedge stops with the point facing the future hole. Rams extend from the fat end of the wedge lifting it higher while pivoting the rear to the ground where spikes hold it firmly in position. Quickly a dump truck pulls up to the elevated end of the unit where a short trough projects to the load center of the truck. The truck will soon be completely full! Now the track on the back of the excavator swings up and into action revealing a second earth moving escalator built into the upper surface of the wedge. As the whole unit cranks into action the lower and upper tracks begin to travel. The upper track pivots around on an articulated guide at the rear of the unit and cuts cruelly into the earth like a chainsaw with large strong scoops. Soil and rocks are torn away at the far end and dragged to the base where they meet the second set of tracks which carries them up the steep ramp finally tumbling down into the waiting truck. The Operator looks down from the small cabin mounted high and to the side where the controls and gauges at his/her disposal include a camera to monitor the loading of the truck. With a simple joystick he can excavate a 20' arc, including pivoting all the way down to dig a vertical trench. Hydro stats control angle, pivot, height and rotation allowing for manipulation and removal of even large rocks. A quick "squat and pivot" sweeps escaped dirt into the discharge escalator. Instead of a hydrolic system that would be slammed by every rock and variation the digger has a forgiving load based system that regulates the downforce of the excavator rather than its position preventing it from ever exceeding the anchoring of the rear of the unit. Jobs begin from one corner of the excavation and progress in an arc to the opposite corner. The speed at which this new excavator can fill full size dump trucks will change the way you bid on large and time sensitive jobs. Whether inside deep excavations, digging foundations from the rim, or doing rapid deep trenching this new rotating excavator has the competition eating dust and your dump drivers working twice as hard. You'll be asking "where can i get faster dump trucks?" and "why not bid on that time critical big profits highway job?" and with a steady output of 150 cubic yards of fill per hour suddenly every mountain starts to look like a big soft mole hill of future profits.
-- WcW, Nov 06 2008

Circular saw version. http://www.lakata.o...Excavator%20Big.jpg
and one seriously kick-ass machine [2 fries shy of a happy meal, Nov 12 2008]

Ok so the old title was a little to dry.
-- WcW, Nov 10 2008


Small linked bucket excavators are baked; larger ones suffer from the square-cube relationship.
-- lurch, Nov 10 2008


They also suffer from the same paragraph break issue as the smaller ones.
-- normzone, Nov 10 2008


Needs paragraph breaks as fore mentioned. Reminds me of the 1965 October issue of, Excavation Monthly. (Big Red Special edition.)
-- skinflaps, Nov 10 2008


Close no?
Link
-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Nov 12 2008


[-2fries] - that's definitely the most awesome centerfold I've seen in a while.
-- lurch, Nov 12 2008



random, halfbakery