Choosing The Right Excavator | Excavator Sales and Exports
If you are looking for excavator sales and exports in the UK? We look at what you need to know about choosing the right excavator.
What Are The Different Types Of Excavators?
Every construction or groundwork project is different, which is why excavator manufacturers have produced such a wide range of equipment. Different excavators will suit different purposes, depending on your work.
Some excavators will be the perfect solution for heavy-duty jobs, whereas others will be more appropriate for precise digging, trenching and soil extraction.
With such a wealth of options, you are bound to find the perfect excavator for your project. However, there are many things to consider before you run out and purchase or hire an excavator, including the type of work you are doing, the terrain of the site you are working on and the size of excavator you need.
For starters, we have listed a few of the most common types of excavator to give you an idea of what they are best suited for.
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Standard Excavator
Standard excavators cover all the basics. With simple boom, stick and bucket attachments, they can help with most groundwork jobs. The bucket extends away from the control cab to gather soil, dirt or gravel from the ground before retracting again. The cab itself can rotate through 360 degrees so it can remain stationary while the boom rotates to gather soil from all around the excavator.
This manoeuvrability means that standard excavators are versatile pieces of machinery, able to assist with most tasks.
You might also hear them referred to as "crawler excavators", given that they run on two parallel tracks.
These tracks help the standard excavator to remain steady when on sloped or uneven ground.
They also provide low ground pressure, making them suitable for job sites with soft soil and terrain.
Like most excavators, standard excavators come in various sizes, with different boom lengths and bucket sizes to suit different jobs.
This means you can customise your excavator to make it even more appropriate for the work you are doing. There is almost nothing a standard excavator can't do, from digging, trenching and handling materials to moving debris, ditch cleaning and demolition.
This wide range of applications has made standard excavators popular in many industries, such as construction, mining, farming, forestry and landscaping.
Long Reach Excavator
Long-reach excavators are again based on the standard excavator: running on parallel tracks and offering extended booms and arms to provide a greater range for your work. While stationary, these excavators can perform all the duties you could want from an excavator, with its added range improving the speed and efficiency of your work.
This makes them particularly well suited to demolition work, where keeping your distance from the building you are bringing down is preferable. The reach of long-reach excavators also makes them better when you need to access hard to reach areas.
Wheeled Excavator
Wheeled excavators are almost the same as standard excavators, except they run on wheels instead of parallel tracks.
Like their standard counterparts, wheeled excavators can undertake various duties, but they are better suited to work sites with firmer ground, such as concrete or asphalt.
They produce added ground pressure, making them less well-suited to working on soft soil or uneven ground.
Their biggest selling point is that you can move wheeled excavators very quickly around your site. Again, this depends on your site. If there is any uneven ground or obstructions in the way, you might want to consider another type of excavator.
However, wheeled excavators can also be driven, meaning you will not need to hire a trailer to transport them to your site in the first place.
Dragline Excavator
Dragline excavators are one of the most heavy-duty versions of this type of machinery. These excavators are mainly used in extensive groundwork or industrial duties, such as canal dredging or strip mining. The bucket of a dragline excavator is operated using wires or chains as it is dragged along the surface of the material you want to gather.
Once you move the bucket to the dumping area, you need to release the bucket to dump the material. Again, these are serious pieces of machinery best suited to large civil engineering projects or surface mining.
Backhoe Excavator
Backhoe excavators are another piece of machinery you can find in a wide range of industries, from construction to commercial mining.
While they may look like standard excavators, there are some important differences.
These include that the excavating arm and bucket are attached to the machine's rear rather than the front, with a second bucket or blade installed on the front to push or level soil and materials in front of the excavator. The arm is also limited in its range to 200 degrees rather than 360 degrees.
One major benefit of hiring or purchasing a backhoe for your project is that they are incredibly versatile pieces of machinery. They offer a standard excavator's dig depth and lift capacity, alongside levelling and soil grading capabilities for site preparation.
They are also uniquely well-suited to moving large volumes of material across project job sites. You can also customise them with most other tool attachments, making them even more versatile.
Hydraulic Shovels
Also referred to as power shovels, hydraulic shovels are robust pieces of kit made primarily for use when conditions for digging are tougher than usual. These are very powerful, larger machines, with buckets attached to lifting arms for hauling large quantities of material. They can be oriented in various ways, much like some of the other excavators on this list, making them versatile machines appropriate for various projects.
Suction Excavator
You won't see suction excavators all that much amongst construction equipment or on industrial work sites.
They are specific pieces of machinery used for removing exact levels of soil or material from the ground.
Using pressurised water, suction excavators loosen the soil or material you are digging before removing that material with a suction pipe.
Given the precise nature of the work these suction excavators do, they are ideal for jobs where delicacy is key, for example, when material needs to be removed without damaging components deeper in the ground.
What Are The Different Sizes Of Excavators?
Choosing the right excavator for your project is essential. The nightmare struggle of hiring or buying an excavator that is too small, or the expensive costs of one that is too large, for the job you want to do should be a key consideration when you decide to use these types of machinery. This section will go over the different models of excavators and the sizes they are available in, and where they would be most appropriate.
There are four standard sizes that excavators are available in, and these are: mini, midi, standard and large.
Mini excavators, or compact excavators, are your best option when you need earth-moving equipment that can fit into confined spaces or there is limited space on your project site.
Mini excavators are perfect for those working on small jobs, indoors, in sewer lines, water line installations, or other projects that don't require large or powerful machinery.
Their small size makes them easily transportable using trucks or other haulage vehicles, compared to their larger counterparts, ideal for those working on multiple sites.
Midi, or mid-sized, excavators are ideal for those who are similarly working in limited space but need the extra reach or power that mini excavators cannot provide.
The combination of manoeuvrable size and increased power means that midi excavators are also just at home on typical landscaping or construction projects.
The most common excavators you will encounter are standard or "full-sized" excavators. The most popular size of standard excavator within the commercial construction industry falls into the 19-24 tonne range of machinery.
While being larger and more powerful than smaller excavators, the hydraulic systems also allow greater customisability, with a wide range of tool attachments that can be used with standard excavators.
As the name suggests, the largest excavator class is used when size and power are needed most. Primarily found on large-scale industrial and major construction or mining projects, larger excavators have the maximum power and hauling capacity of any similar type of machinery.
While larger models are undoubtedly powerful, the size of large excavators can sometimes be difficult to manage, requiring specialist haulage vehicles to transport them.
Which Is The Best Excavator For Me?
Again, ensuring that you choose the right excavator at the right size with the right tools and capabilities for your project is essential. If you have a particular excavator in mind, you may want to check its hydraulic system or testing options for that piece of equipment to see if it would suit your needs. Most manufacturers or machinery hire services publish the amount of work each machine can perform in a single day's work.
It would help if you also thought about the site you will be working on, any major obstacles or hazards, and whether any would develop as the project progresses. Ensuring that you consider all of your project's requirements when hiring or purchasing an excavator is the best way to avoid making potentially expensive mistakes.
Here are a few of the considerations and specifications you will want to consider when choosing the right excavator for your project:
Ensuring that you select an excavator with enough engine power to move around your site and conduct the work you need it to do adequately is crucial.
Looking at every level of the engine, from its cylinders to its bore to its piston stroke, will give you the best idea of the power the excavator can deliver.
The maximum operating weight of any excavator will provide you with the information you need to know. This figure describes the full weight of the machine with equipment, operator, and different heavy loads included.
Choosing an excavator that is too large to fit on your site is ultimately useless, so you will need to consider this specification carefully.
Excavators are usually measured in tonnes, referring to their operating weight. As this figure increases, so does the breakout force of the excavator.
Buckets are one of the most common tool attachments for excavators, so you will want to ensure that the excavator you choose has the right sized bucket to perform the work you need it to.
For example, if you are digging deep, you will naturally need a larger bucket capacity, whereas narrower buckets are better suited to digging narrow areas, such as trenches.
While this may be a lot to consider all at once, the first place you should focus is on the right excavator size for you.
The categories of "mini", "midi", etc., mentioned above are general, and the sizes within these categories will vary between excavators from the same manufacturer.
Therefore, when considering the size of excavator you require, it is better to think in terms of tonnage and operating weight limits.
Excavator Work Tool Attachments
The versatility of excavators is best demonstrated in the variety of work tool attachments that can be combined with them to help you complete your work. Whether it's larger buckets to help you reach a deeper digging depth or hammers to help you break up tough materials, there is almost nothing your excavator can't do with the right equipment. Here we have listed a few of the most popular work tool attachments for excavators that can help improve your efficiency, no matter the project you are working on.
Buckets are the most common excavator tool attachment you will find, and different buckets will provide different advantages.
Slim buckets with sharp teeth on their edges are perfect for trench digging, while deeper and wider buckets are better for collecting and hauling loose material.
Thumb attachments help your excavator grip whatever material you haul in the bucket attachment. This can increase the amount of material you can gather each time, improving efficiency and ensuring greater safety when handling larger materials.
Augers are essentially a digging tool, providing a quick way of digging holes straight down into the ground.
With a large spiral blade powered by hydraulics, these attachments are perfect for landscaping or construction uses requiring consistent holes for fence gates, pipeline support or house joists.
Primarily used in the demolition trade, excavator hammers are perfect for breaking up tough materials in urban environments, such as concrete or tarmac, when hand tools just won't do.
Hammers can help expedite the process, ensuring your project runs smoothly.
Another popular attachment for demolition teams, rippers are perfect for slicing through tough materials, whether hard soil or building materials.
Couplers are essentially the attachment you need if you switch between attachments when multiple tasks need doing or when working on different projects simultaneously.
Without a coupler, you will need a large crew of operators to help remove one attachment and replace it with another. Couplers help speed the process along, helping your project run on time and increasing productivity.
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