Machine excavation

The ubiquitous tractor with backhoe is not the only machine available. Giant earth moving and excavating Ling equipment is capable of moving mountains. Miniature machines can be driven through a I m gap to give machine capabilities in back. gardens or even inside buildings themselves.

Here we must repeat the earlier caveat regarding the suitability of a particular machine for the type of excavation being tackled. Texts on contractors' plant treat the subject of choice of appropriate equipment in some depth.

With regard to soil conditions, machine excavation is not subject to the same variation in output as hand work, providing the correct type of plant can be procured. The output multipliers in Table give some guide as to variations in performance in different soil conditions.




Multipliers for difficulty of machine excavation due to nature of ground

*Low output due to general inability of machines to do the breaking up which requires pneumatic drills or explosives. 

Table 02 shows outputs for a particular machine for different work and conditions. The soil classifications given in the table, which clearly influence the output of the machine, seem to obviate the necessity to use the difficulty multipliers from Table 01 This is only partly true. The differences across Table 02 are more to do with how much of the spoil is retained in the bucket at each cycle rather than how the machine can cope with penetrating the soil. Unless the work is in soft or hard rock. penetration is not a great. problem for the larger modern excavator with good reserves of power. However. the data in Table 01 can be useful where excavation rates for ordinal.), soil only are available.