Bucyrus 8750 BIGGEST DRAGLINE Massive mining machine

The world is still primarily reliant on fossil fuels for energy generation. With billions of people across the globe, this means the demands that are placed on the mining industry are huge. Extracting these fossil fuels as efficiently as humanly possible is of utmost importance, and for best efficiency and ability to meet this demand, you need scale.

And the five machines featured across the next six pages definitely fi t the bill scale. This is huge scale engineering that you can barely get your head around. It’s difficult to get your head around just how vast these massive tools are – not to mention the sheer amount of fossil fuels they extract each and every day, around the clock. They may cost tens of millions of pounds, and last for decades, but when it comes down to it they are still controlled by a human being. The principles they use will be familiar to those who have driven past road works or looked closely at a building site. It’s just that they are enlarged to dimensions to take your breath away. Read on to find out how they work

The mining industry is all about scale. And when we say these machines are big, we mean BIG!

Bucyrus 8750

This massive dragline can clear football pitch-sized spaces right before your eyes

The Bucyrus Dragline 8750 will run 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and excavate up to 116m3 per scoop– that’s the equivalent of 58,000 two-litre water bottles. It will do this for an average of 40 years, which is why it’s used in surface mining operations worldwide. There are 45 different specifications of dragline, each with its very own on-staff application engineer.

The 8750 series has multiple bucket capacities, and a boom length of up to 132.5m. It can reach depths of up to 79.8m. It is among the largest of all mobile equipment in the world; but when we say mobile, we do not mean fast! Moving a dragline is not the work of a moment, particularly the Bucyrus. It has a rated suspended load of up to 344,736kg and its approximate working weight is more than 7.5 tons. It is powered by Siemens AC drives throughout. The8750 series comes in various guises, with the range topper being the 8750D3. This uses gearless AC direct drive for hoist and drag – the advantages here are in efficiency. It allows fast bucket fills, and the lack of hoist and drag gearing also reduces maintenance. Power is provided to the AC drives by utility lines –the enormous power consumption means that connection directly to the