5 of the World’s Largest Machines

The world’s biggest and most powerful machines in the world do the work that not so long ago took armies of people. They move and succeed in their tasks of helping mine for critical resources, build the construction of today’s renewable giants, and even transport other machines and people.

The following, in no particular order, are machines that are among the largest in the world.  

Bucket wheel excavator

It’s the heaviest machine capable of moving on its own. The Bagger 293 is a giant bucket-wheel excavator built to move a lot of earth and manufactured by TAKRAF of Leipzig, Germany. It is one in a series of machines that is so famous it has its own Lego set made up of nearly 4,000 individual pieces. 

The second largest machine after the stationary Hadron Collider, Bagger 293 is 315 feet tall, 738 feet long, and weighs 31.3 million pounds. It takes five people to operate this monster that can move 8.475 million cubic feet of earth a day (the same as the Bagger 288).

Its massive wheel is 71 feet across and is outfitted with 18 buckets (each with a capacity of 1,452 gallons). The buckets scoop up earth and then dump it onto a conveyor belt to be carried away. The machine does move, but not fast. At its top speed it can go three-quarters of a mile in an hour. 
 

Largest electric crane

The SK6000 all-electric ring crane, is the world’s largest and highest-capacity electric crane on the planet, reported Mammoet. The Netherlands-based manufacturer that engineers heavy lift and transport machinery reported that the SK6000 can be operated entirely from electric power and can lift components such as turbine towers, nacelles, and blades that are 3,300 tons to a hook height of 721 feet. It has a maximum radius of 472 feet.

Because the machine does not add to the carbon footprint of the construction it is supporting, it is well suited for wind farms, including offshore foundation components. The crane is for large, floating wind installations with a maximum capacity in the range of 6,000 tons. 

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The SK6000 is being assembled at Westdorpe in the Netherlands. The assembly is being supported by two 250 ton Mammoet crawler cranes and a 140 ton Gottwald mobile harbor crane. The initial phase includes the assembly of the SK6000’s base frame, power packs, and control room.

Big Bertha tunneling machine

Bertha is a tunnel boring machine, a closed-shield machine with a cutting head that is 57 feet in diameter. It is the largest earth pressure balance machine. Manufactured by Hitachi Zosen Sakai Works in Osaka, Japan, crew assembled it on site in when it dug the State Route 99 tunnel beneath downtown Seattle.
 
This $80-million machine has 600 cutting disks mounted on a steel face, measures 300 feet in length, and weighs 6,900 tons. With an installed power of 22,000 kilowatt seconds and a maximum thrust of 392,000 kilonewtons, Bertha can rotate up to 1.8 revolutions per minute and has a torque of 147,000 kilonewton meters.
  
Bertha’s crew completed work on the State Route 99, a 2-mile-long tunnel under Seattle in 2017. The Washington State Department of Transportation's Alaskan Way Viaduct replacement tunnel project began in 2013.

Overburden conveyor bridge

The F60 was built by VEB TAKRAF Lauchhammer (today TAKRAF GmbH Lauchhammer) in Lichterfeld, Germany from 1989 to 1991. This conveyer bridge was the last to be built in a series of five and it is now a popular attraction in the city since it offers, at a height of 75 meters above ground level, a panoramic view of the surrounding Lausitz region. 

The steel bridge never moved mined materials, rather it spanned the mining area and connected the extraction-side with the side where the overburden (the rocks or soil layer that needs to be removed to access the material being mined) was dropped. The giant of a machine worked at the site from March 1991 to June 1992. 

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It is known as the “Horizontal Eiffel Tower of Lusatia.” It is 502 meters long—182 meters longer that the Paris landmark. Its width is 204 meters and the height of almost 80 meters. Two excavators together were able to skim a maximum of 60 meters of overburden, hence the name “F60.” Today—even after modification and disassembly of some components, it weighs 11,000 tons.

Largest passenger elevator

The world’s largest passenger elevator is located at the Jio World Centre in Mumbai, India, which itself is the largest convention center in the world. It was manufactured and installed by KONE, Helsinki, Finland, and can carry up to 235 people at the same time. 

Designed for large crowds of conference visitors, it is the size of a studio apartment and features sofas, glass doors and walls, and an opulent ceiling studded with crystal glass. It weighs 16 tons and offers passengers scenic views of the complex and surrounding gardens while it moves between five floors. Its top speed is one meter per second. 

The elevator is enormous at 25.78 square meters and supported by 18 pulleys and nine steel cables using an innovative pulley beam system. The entire structural shaft moves on rails fixed over steel columns. The hoisting mechanism is heavy duty and the elevator can be monitored remotely. 

Cathy Cecere is membership content program manager.