The power of machines

I was walking out of the Mill and Mountain coffee shop (located on Main Street), with my girlfriend when I saw two big excavators were moving constantly behind the Wendy's.  I could not help myself but  grab my camera and girlfriends hand and rush closer. It was funny because I found this site of the excavators to be very intriguing, but I could see in my girlfriend's eyes that she was not even slightly fascinated by the site, dirt, or the machines.

Here is what was going on.  There were two excavators and one loading truck.  The first excavator was stationed on what seemed to be a little pile of gravel.  The same excavator was loading gravel into a dump truck.  Once the truck was full, it took the gravel and dumped it on the other side of the construction site.  The second excavator was located behind the pile of gravel.  The second excavator was removing soil from a hill and piling the earth behind the first excavator.  This is the brillance of the whole operation.

Step 1.

Excavator 1

 

During step one the truck gets loaded by excavator one.  The excavator takes about five buckets of soil before the truck leaves to go dump the soil.

Step 2.

                                                                                                        (Excavator 2)

While the truck travels to go dump the soil, and during step one, excavator 2 is compiling soil behind excavator one.  Excavator 2 is excavating the hill that you can see in the picture above.   

Step 3.

During step three, excavator 1 is moving all excavator two's soil closer, so that it is easier and quicker for him to reload the truck when it comes back.  The great thing about this is that excavator 1 never has to move and is ready to load the truck when it comes back (about 8 min later).  I don't think you can see it in the pictures above, but excavator 1 was always sitting on just enough soil around him so that the excavator does not fall or tilt. 

In our Construction Principles lecture, with Dr. Andrew McCoy, we talked about efficiency, truck cycles, and cost of equipment.  As far as this operation goes, I think this is very efficient and well planned out.  I would say bring in one more truck so that the excavator can load two at a time and still have enough soil to sit on but after looking at the site it would be very hard to cram in another truck.  The reason is because there is only enough space for one truck to drive.  If there was two trucks, then the one truck will have to wait for the other. So, the second dump truck will be just waste of money.  As far as having two excavators, that's great because if there was one then the truck will have to wait longer for the excavator to reload.  With just one excavator it has to excavate the soil, move it, and load it.  The other problem with having just one excavator is that the truck will have to travel farther to dump the soil.    

In class we learned a few usefull eqautions, such as this one to find how productive equipment is per hour. 

Here is some other information that I gather while I was watching the excavators work

Well, that is all I have for now.  Check in later because there are more reports to come. 

I hope you enjoyed reading everything. 

Thank you and all the best,

Mic