Hey guys I was wondering whats the smallest face shovel you have ever seen working and what was it doing? where I come from in Aus never seen a small one only bigger ones in mine sites. so i was wondering what would be the advantage in using a smaller one as i saw a bucket for one the other day in an auction it was for a 40tonner hitachi.
O&K RH25 in Darriman Vic, was working in a lime pit, weighed in at 50 tons. Still sitting there, they use a 30 tonnes tracked machine now, lot more effective.
A number of years ago the opencast coal mine I was working at had O&K RH6 & RH9 face shovels for parting off thin seams of coal.
We had a small O&K at one of the company's I work for in California. It couldn't have been but a 30 tonner or so. Only one I've ever seen and I never got a chance to run it ....
Any time you're loading out of a face and the material is too hard and or high for a wheel loader to dig or an excavator to sit on top of, shovel is the way to go. Some make do with an excavator from the bottom but it's not efficient.
The smallest "proper" face or front shovel that wasn't a custom or one-off that I'm aware of is the Poclain FC30 with a working weight of ~9T. I saw one at a clay / shale quarry in Belgium back in the '80s. It's unfortunate it was on a weekend so I didn't see it working but was surely still in operation to some extent. I've got old-fashioned photos somewhere, but it's easier to to post Eric's digital image of an FC30. The only place these smaller shovels seemed to exist in any numbers is Europe and the UK. I always thought the advantage they had was the combination of a higher loading height allowing for larger dump trucks (regardless of front dump or bullclam) with a full bucket every time compared to a backhoe. Without considering possible manufacturers in China, the smallest shovel currently available as a standard order unit is the Liebherr R956.
I saw pictures somewhere a few days ago of a cat 328 set up to be a front shovel found it https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/fb/47/0b/fb470b988dac8e405a783004f51b1d4a.jpg
Cool looking 328.
That looks like it's set up for loading in a tunnel. Why else would you want a zero tail swing? :beatsme
That 328D LCR was on display at the bauma show in 2007 and is a tunnel set-up. As of 2011 it was still sitting unsold in the Zeppelin yard in Garching just rusting away.
Most of these hoes , you can hook bucket on backwards . Usually better for backfill , not digging .
We done this many times when needing to excavating a bit deeper than an existing foundation. We put the bucket on backwards on a mini, dug a bucket width every ten ft or so down the linedigging under the footing. We then filled them with lean mix and repeated the process until the wall was underpinned. We could then dig to the new depth. Dont try this without an engineers blessing, lots of factors come into play.