Bucket Wheel Excavators ( BWE )

Bucket wheel excavator SRs 4000 in Maritza, Bulgaria 

Bucket Wheel Excavators (BWE) are continuous cutting machines for soft to semi hard materials like clay, sand, gravel, marl and their blendings as well as lignite and hard coal. Tenova TAKRAF Bucket 

Wheel Excavators excavate a wide range of capacities between 200 and 16000 m³/h and at working bench heights from less than 5 m to maximal 51 m.

The Bucket Wheel Excavator is favorable connected to a belt conveyor system with or without a Mobile Transfer Conveyor intermediately installed or a cross pit spreader transferring the material to the waste dump or the raw material stockpile.

According to local mine conditions Compact and Large Bucket Wheel Excavators are offered – whereas the selection mostly is determined by required cutting height and width (working block).

The characteristic parts of a Bucket Wheel Excavator are the cutting wheel with buckets, the wheel boom, the superstructure with counterweight boom, the substructure, the undercarriage with crawler tracks and a transfer boom to the bench conveyor (or a connecting bridge to the loading unit). 

All main parts are designed to meet the demands of the project regarding optimization, standardization and maintenance. Therefore, Tenova TAKRAF stands with more than 100 years of Bucket Wheel Excavator-experience.

Bucket Wheel Excavators are among the largest terrestrial vehicles ever constructed - the biggest machine built, the Tenova TAKRAF SRs 8000, has a weight of 14.200 t and moves 240,000 m³ of overburden per day.

Source : http://www.takraf.com/en/products/miningequipment/bucketwheelexcavator.htm