How big is the excavator? What are the factors limiting the size of excavators?

Excavators are very common in our daily life, because the rapid development of excavators, high-rise buildings can be seen everywhere, especially in the mining field, is essential. So do you know what the biggest excavator in the world is? What are the factors limiting its capacity?

The largest excavator you can see now is the RH-400 of BUCYRUS, weighing about 980 tons, with a bucket capacity of 45 cubic meters and a width of 8.9 meters. This excavator may have been seen by many people. It appeared in Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen. The model was first built in Terex's German factory in 1997, then Bucyrus acquired Terex's mining equipment in 2010, and Caterpillar acquired Bucyrus in 2011. Then, back to the beginning, Terex acquired O&K Mining to take over large mining equipment. In addition, this model (already or soon) is not the largest, Caterpillar's new 6090FS bucket capacity can reach an astonishing 52 cubic meters.

So what are the factors that limit the capacity of excavators?

1、The limitation of technical conditions.

As a product of Electromechanical-hydraulic integration, it is subject to the power of diesel engine, the conduction efficiency of hydraulic system (which has a lot of loss in the process of energy conversion, the conversion efficiency of engine is slightly higher than one third) and the strength of structural parts.

 2、Capacity of supporting facilities.

Just as aircraft building should take into account the carrying capacity of airports, ship building should take into account the handling capacity of ports, mining production as a systematic project, it should also take into account the carrying capacity of roads and the transport capacity of supporting transport equipment.

 3、Cost constraints.

To ensure that the benefits of material mining are greater than the costs. If it's just about size, then there are super-large shovels, like electric shovels,shown below.