Types of Excavators & their applications

Excavators are earthmoving equipment used for construction jobs, digging purposes as well as various lifting and carrying tasks in various applications. Excavators are consists of Engine, Pump, boom, arm, bucket, cabin, undercarriage as main components. These excavators are also used along with various special attachments such as rock breakers, coupler, grapples, clamshell, cutters, shears etc. Excavators are important machines used in various infrastructures, construction & development work. Excavator size will vary with required amount of task to be performed considering factors like productivity, fuel efficiency, and multi-functional purposes.

Different Excavator types

The main uses for an excavators are digging, trenching, earthmoving, loading and foundations, providing the power to do these tasks much more easily and effectively than any other piece of heavy equipment in the market. Below mentioned are some popular types of excavators.

In this article, we are going to dig a little deeper into the different types of hydraulic excavator & share insights on their various applications.

1. Crawler excavator

A crawler excavator is a tracked machine designed for digging, loading, earthmoving, grading, lifting and carrying jobs and is classified by its mode of locomotion. They are also termed as general purpose excavators and hydraulic excavators. They have a boom, arm and bucket to the front of the machine. The chain wheel system in crawler excavator allows them to slide down and scale hills with less risk, making them suitable for grading hilly areas and landscaping uneven terrain. While slower than wheeled excavators, crawlers provide overall greater stability and flexibility. Crawler excavators are widely used in India in multiple applications like Construction, Mining & Quarry.

2. Wheeled excavator

Wheeled excavators are general purpose excavators used in earthwork, utility work, construction site projects and street maintenance etc. These excavators are equipped with advanced controls, high ground clearance and easy maneuverability in confined spaces, let you accomplish more work in less time.

They are equally powerful and productive as tracked excavators. They work really well for roadside work as they are more maneuverable than track type excavators. They run on wheels, instead of tracks. The biggest plus point of this class of excavators is that it can be driven from one job site to another by wheels easily on a road, while crawler excavators running on tracks are generally transported on a trailer for even a short distance travel. Uneven ground surface can be a problem for these machines, too. They excel in urban areas. Wheeled excavators can be used for a wide variety of applications such as road work, scrapyard work, material handling, waste handling, utility installation, just to name a few.

3. Mini excavator

A mini excavator is a crawler or wheeled excavator with an operating weight ranging from 0.7 to 6 tonnes. This is one another general purpose excavator, with the equal level of performance and usage but a short swing radius superstructure, which offers many benefits in urban and confined areas. There are two types of Mini excavators, one with conventional tail swing whose house will extend beyond the tracks through the complete rotation, while the another one with zero tail swing whose house diameter stays within the tracks width through the complete rotation. The boom swing operation of mini excavator is one of the important features for operator to dig alongside obstacles with lesser restrictions and better visibility. Mini Excavator in India getting popular as it can perform work that is traditionally done by using manpower.

4. Long-reach excavator

As the name suggests, a long reach excavator consists of extended boom and arm which give a longer working range for performing tasks quite away from the machine that is hard to reach such as deep trenching, underwater digging etc. This kind of design helps for better operation in hard to reach locations. Long reach excavators are widely used for demolition projects and over water body applications. Various attachments can be fixed to the arm to perform additional operations such as crushing, cutting and shearing.

5. Backhoe loader

Backhoe Loader is very popular machine & easily visible on roads & construction sites. It is heavy equipment that consists of a tractor-like unit fitted with a loader-style bucket on the front and a backhoe on the back. These machines can perform multiple jobs with ease & hence popularly known as multipurpose machine. It can easily handle landscaping jobs of all sizes and types, such as digging up trees, land, and moving material from one location to another. They can also use for loading-unloading trucks, moving rocks, boulders, and gravel, or moving dirt and pushing topsoil into place. It is also used in quarry & mining sites. The big difference with excavators is backhoe loaders cannot rotate 360 degrees like Excavators & also have restrictions to work in rocky, muddy areas.

Hyundai in India provides wide product range from mini-excavator to 50T excavator.

Mini Excavators Range: R30Z-9AK, HX35Az

Construction Excavators: R85A SMART PLUS, R130 SMART, R140L SMART PLUS, R150L SMART PLUS, R210 SMART PLUS, R215 SMART PLUS

Long Reach Excavator: R245LR SMART PLUS

Mining Excavators: R215L SMART PLUS, R230LM SMART PLUS, R340L SMART, HX360L, HX380L, HX520L