Excavator

There can be no less stirring site for someone in the building industry than a giant excavator and its operator working in tandem on a large digging project.

Apart from shovels of JCB’S excavator have a single task that they are required to do and that is one that they do so well. They dig holes, trenches either for pipe laying or for foundations. Excavators come in a lot of sizes and colors but the basic design remains fairly standard. The operators’ cabin, which can be closed or open depending on the season, sits on a kind of rotating platform known in the industry as a pivot,

The pivot houses the excavators bucket that is mounted on a large articulated arm. The actual arm is a piece of hydraulics mastery and is capable if lifting and shift copious quantities of earth and very large and heavy rocks and boulders when using on a digging project. In most version of the excavator, the platform is mounted on tracks instead of wheels.

This has the definite advantage of increasing the excavator’s stability. However the disadvantage is that the excavator can never be transported on the open road, and has to be delivered everywhere, usually on the back of a low loader. Many excavator owner or operators have their own truck which they use to transport the excavator from site to site, contract to contract without the need for involving anyone else in the excavator’s transportation.

Excavators can also be used in demolition, in the open field mining industry, dredging rivers and lakes or in the landscaping gardening industry. However, most serious people in the construction industry will argue that the excavator is a bit of a pig in the poke unless used for digging. And dig it can and all day long. Built for comfort and not for speed, excavators can dig holes and trenches in every topographical situation. Stable and safe, a good excavator operator will play his machine like a fiddle and produce the best professional results.

The advantage of an excavator that, while its arm can work within a radius of 360 degrees, in most cases it will be required to work at 180 degrees only. In other words to dig a trench in a very straight line and at a standard depth. The excavator’s powerful arm will also be used to lift and lay heavy metal or concrete pipes or even on occasion electrical pipes into the trench without damaging them.

On these kinds of projects the excavator will usually work in partnership with a shovel, who will remove the earth that has been dug out, and fill in the trench with "padding materials, usually fine gravel to protect the pipes when they have been placed in the trench.

Sometimes excavators can be used to discover an existing pipe that has been damaged or needs to be moved to another location. This is where the excavator’s operator skills can be really put to the test as they need to dig out the pipe without damaging it.

This can be a slow and demanding task but one that the excavator comes into its own. Although there are JCB’S that can do the job, most contractors like to use excavators to dig foundations. The larger ones have power that leaves the JCB behind and for larger projects, bringing in an excavator have proved pretty cost effective.

In the last few twenty years or so, most of the leading manufactures of excavation equipment have introduced a mini excavator for more delicate digging tasks. Almost a scale version of its larger brother, the mini excavator or "bugger" can get to places that no other piece of digging equipment can go.

Under houses or up the steepest slope, they are ideal for this type of project in building or in agriculture. A very popular application for the mini bugger is to dig holes and lots of them for planting orchards or forests. Their 360 degree arm is especially effective and these machines can dig hundreds of holes a day, exactly according to a specific depth or width.

Excavators are handy things to have around for any kind of project that requires accuracy, both in the construction or agricultural industry. There is simply nothing like them.