Abstract
IN a paper given before the Institution of Electrical Engineers on May 14, P. H. R. Durand points out that the electrically equipped single-bucket excavator is employed extensively in the quarrying of rocks such as limestone and chalk for cement manufacture, ironstone and other minerals and also for excavating granite, sand and gravel, clays and shales. Large installations are used in the open-cast mining of coal. These machines are also used sometimes around industrial works for handling materials such as blast-furnace slag. In some quarries the excavator provides raw material which is processed in an adjoining factory and for which there may be limited accommodation prior to processing. The excavator is here the starting-point of a mass-production unit, its rate of output being measured by the hour instead of by the week or month, and in applications of this type it must be regarded as an automatic machine. The author describes the sphere of application of the excavators and, in commenting on the increasing importance of electric drive, gives an explanation of the fundamental motions and structural limitations of the machines.
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Electrically Driven Excavators. Nature 149, 664 (1942). https://doi.org/10.1038/149664c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/149664c0