A bucket wheel excavator (BWE) is a large heavy equipment machine used in surface mining.

The primary function of BWEs is to remove thousands of tons of excess load per day by acting as a continuous digging machine in large-scale open pit mining operations. What sets BWEs apart from other large scale mining equipment such as bucket chain excavators is that they use a large wheel, a continuous bucket pattern used to scoop up material as the wheel turns. They are among the largest vehicles (land or sea) ever built and the largest of bucket-wheel excavators (the 14,200-tonne Bagger 293 holds the Guinness World Record for heaviest land-based vehicle ever built).

Bucket wheel excavators were used in mining for the last century, and some were first produced in the 1920s. [1] Along with many other mining machine parts (conveyor belts, spreaders, crushing stations, heap leach systems, etc.), they are used to transport and remove large volumes of overload (waste). While the general concepts that go into a BWE haven't changed much, their dimensions are in II.

In the 1950s, two German mining firms ordered the world's first ultra-large BWEs and had three BWEs built for lignite mining near Cologne, Germany. German BWEs are more than 16 m (52 ​​ft) in diameter, weigh 5,500 short tons (5,000 t) and are over 180 m (600 ft) long, with eighteen tracked units for movement and a wheel that can cut over 180 areas he had. m (600 ft) at a time [2]

BWEs built since the 1990s such as the Bagger 293 have reached 96 m (315 ft) high, 225 m (738 ft) long and weighed up to 14,200 t (31.3 million lb). The bucket wheel itself can hold over 15 m (20 cu yd) of material, with 20 buckets each, each of which can be over 21 m (70 ft) in diameter as many. BWEs have also advanced to the extreme conditions in which they can operate now. Many BWEs are designed to operate in climates with temperatures as low as −45 °C (−49 °F). Developers are now shifting their focus to automation and the use of electrical power.