Walking excavator

• Walking Excavator

Meet - is a huge walking dragline. The official name of this monster is as follows: Mining and overburden complex "Stoilensky-2", or more simply, in Czech, - KU-800.

It works this miracle of technology in the depths of the quarry Stoilensky and season of their work sends dumps more than three million cubic meters of overburden.

Panorama career Stoilensky - one of the leading Russian producer of iron-ore raw materials. Today pit depth reaches 335 meters (height greater than the Moscow-City).

KU-800 can be clearly seen from almost any point of a career.

When photographing excavator close, I was faced with the problem of crop - the subject did not want to get into the frame.

The total mass of the KU-800 - 3, 5 thousand tons. This compares with a weight of 100 subway cars.

bucket wheel diameter - 11 meters boom length - 41 meters.

With one of the mechanics section of the mining and overburden complex, I went on a tour of the excavator.

To say that the machine dimensions are impressive - to say nothing.

The excavator works in a quarry plant for almost forty years. The first part of the complex began to arrive at the assembly site Stojlenskogo mine in 1971.

The assembly lasted about three years, and commissioning work was carried out a few months.

Diagrams and documents were translated from Czech and often incomplete. To get to the unusual names of folders, papers had to sit at night. Ivan Tolmachev, mechanic plot mining and overburden complex: "Yes, it was a hard time starting. Not until the end of waste electrical circuit. I had to change them, the new mount, there were many failures in electric circuits, and then they were simplified, everything returned to normal and the failure was significantly less. " Indeed, the endless river of wires penetrate excavator up and down.

In some places had to squeeze sideways. I just arrived in the new jeans and a dark T-shirt, smart guy.

The operator station. Through reflection seen rotary wheel.

Now these excavators on the territory of the former Soviet Union only two. One of his career Stoilensky, the other - in one of the quarries in Ukraine.

Travel stair galleries. In the early years of the excavator mechanics often had to overcome more than one hundred steps to find the cause of the failure of a node. Wiring excavator was far from perfect.

crawling on the last step, I complained of shortness of breath some fatigue from the rapid ascent.

- It's okay, I assume that you have just climbed the stairs to the 17-storey building. The height of the excavator - 51 meters.

On the KU-800 has several valves: 35-ton on the boom, two mounting truck 15 tons and two knee-slewing crane.

An incredible sight - hanging in the air multi-ton structure. In the engine room are located at the height of power units and facilities personnel, there is even a repair bay with a lathe.

Traveling through the maze of an excavator, a feeling that you're in a submarine.

KU-800 at night looks like a space station Protoss.

Mining and overburden complex Stoilensky - is not the only one bucket wheel excavator, it is also kilometers of conveyor lines, several peregruzhnyh points and spreader.

With the spreader conveyor belt excavator connects up to 8 km, which extends along the perimeter of the quarry. As the conveyor belt from the excavator to overburden dumps moves more than 20 minutes.

Lucky to drive at the time of shift change when the excavator was out of work.

Four workers went to look at another group of photos.

According to one of the mechanics, if you take on a human scale, the excavator in the prime of life. A recent survey of steel structures Czech experts confirmed that before retirement is still far from the giants.