Excavators are huge pieces of industrial machinery designed for digging that are often just called diggers in the construction industry. They consist of a large chassis with a cab in which the operator sits, a track system for movement and a boom arm with a digging bucket on the end. These pieces of equipment are hydraulic and they run on diesel engines. If you think of the steam shovels of many decades ago, the design of today's excavators are very similar.

The most common uses of excavators include digging holes, digging trenches and digging openings for basements. They can be used for demolition, dredging and clearing in forested areas. They can also be used to dig in order to landscape or create grades. Digging for mining is another purpose for which someone might want to use excavators. And by changing out the digging bucket for other attachments, they can be used for pile driving and drilling among other things.

Small excavators are often called mini-excavators or compact excavators. Occasionally something small like a skidsteer loader with a backhoe attachment will also be called a mini-excavator. The largest excavator currently on the market today has digging bucket they can hold 9000 gallons of weight and an engine that provides 3000 hp. The entire piece of equipment weights over 1.2 million pounds. An excavator this big is used for only the most heavy-duty earthmoving and digging.

The chief differences between an excavator and a backhoe are how it's used and how it's constructed. A backhoe is actually a tractor with a backhoe attachment or front loader with a backhoe attachment placed on the front. Because a backhoe is actually the arm and the bucket rather than the entire piece of equipment, the digging arm can be mounted on the front or the back of either of these. The most common, a backhoe tractor, has a bucket on the front with a backhoe arm on the back. Typically, these backhoes run on wheels and are used for light to medium weight digging and excavating.

An excavator by comparison has a dedicated arm rather than a removable one. While the arm is attached to the chassis permanently, the digging bucket can be changed out with other attachments. An excavator is also typically much larger than a tractor and also runs on tracks rather than wheels, which is an easy way to tell them apart. While a tractor or skidsteer loader can also run on tracks, there are models that also run on wheels. Excavators always use tracks because of the extreme weight and the fact that they're used for digging in areas that need high traction and maneuverability.

Some of the attachments that can be mounted onto the arm of an excavator include things like borers and drills. Different buckets can also be used. One that's very common and harkens back to the steam shovel era has teeth and cutters on the sides designed to rake into hard ground and dig it out. Other buckets have a flat edge that is designed for moving soft ground or mud.

Photo Credits: billjacobus1

Originally posted 2010-04-07 03:22:58. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

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Categories:

construction, Handy Man, Tools

Tags:

backhoe attachment, basements, boom arm, chassis, chief differences, compact excavators, construction industry, diesel engines, diggers, digging holes, earthmoving, forested areas, heavy duty, industrial machinery, medium weight, mini excavator, mini excavators, skidsteer loader, steam shovels, trenches