Huge Manitowok 4600 Heavy lift Dragline at the SNS Project, 2005. "Manny" is what this dragline is called. "Manny is short for Manitowok and is so big, I can't fit it in on the picture..."

Manny over decades came from the Nevada Test Site, then to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, now at to Oakridge, Tennessee, ORNL. All are department of Energy sites, in the USA. April 2005 aerial photo of the SNS site, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, USA. The Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) is an accelerator-based neutron source being built in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, USA, by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). ... The Nevada Test Site is a United States Department of Energy reservation located in Nye County, Nevada, about 65 miles (105 km) northwest of the City of Las Vegas, near 37°07′ N 116°03′ W. Formerly known as the Nevada Proving Ground the site, established on January 11, 1951... Aerial view of the lab and surrounding area. ... State nickname: The Golden State Other U.S. States Capital Sacramento Largest city Los Angeles Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) Official languages English Area 410,000 km² (3rd)  - Land 404,298 km²  - Water 20,047 km² (4. ... Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is a multiprogram science and technology national laboratory managed for the United States Department of Energy by UT-Battelle, LLC. ORNL is located in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, near Knoxville. ...

Dragline excavation systems are heavy equipment used in civil engineering and surface mining. In civil engineering the smaller types are used for road and port construction. The larger types are used in strip-mining operations to extract coal and these are amongst the largest mobile equipment (not water-borne), and weigh in the vinicity of 2000 metric tonnes. An excavator Engineering vehicles are heavy-duty vehicles, specially designed for executing engineering tasks. ... In modern usage, civil engineering is a broad field of engineering that deals with the planning, construction, and maintenance of fixed structures, or public works, as they related to earth, water, or civilization and their processes. ... The El Chino Mine located near Silver City, New Mexico is an open-pit copper mine Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the earth, usually (but not always) from an ore body, vein, or (coal) seam. ... In modern usage, civil engineering is a broad field of engineering that deals with the planning, construction, and maintenance of fixed structures, or public works, as they related to earth, water, or civilization and their processes. ... This page is related to transport; you may be looking for the 2002 Bollywood movie Road. ... Strip mining is the practice of mining a seam of mineral ore by first removing all of the soil and rock that lies on top of it. ... Coal is a fossil fuel extracted from the ground either by underground mining, open-pit mining or strip mining. ... A tonne (also called metric ton) is a non-SI unit of mass, accepted for use with SI, defined as: 1 tonne = 103 kg (= 106 g). ...

A dragline bucket system consists of a large bucket which is suspended from a boom (A large truss like structure). The bucket is maneuvered by means of a number of ropes and chains. The hoistrope, powered by large diesel or electric motors, supports the bucket and hoist-coupler assembly from the boom. The dragrope is used to draw the bucket assembly horizontally. By skillful maneuver of the hoist and the dragropes the bucket is controlled for various operations. A schematic of a large dragline bucket system is shown below. Truss bridge for a single track railway, converted to pedestrian use and pipeline support. ... Diesel fuel is a specific distillate fraction of fuel oil that is used in a diesel engine invented by German engineer Rudolf Diesel, and perfected by Charles F. Kettering. ... Electric motors of various sizes. ...

Operation

In a typical cycle of excavation, the bucket is positioned above the material to be excavated. The bucket is then lowered and the dragrope is then drawn so that the bucket is dragged along the surface of the material. The bucket is then lifted by using the hoist rope. A swing operation is then performed to move the bucket to the place where the material is to be dumped. The dragrope is then released causing the bucket to tilt making the material in the bucket to fall down. This is called a dump operation.

Draglines in mining

A large dragline system used in the open pit mining industry costs approximately US$20-50 million. A typical bucket has a volume ranging from 30 to 60 cubic metres (Extremely large buckets range up to 150 cubic metres). The length of the boom ranges from 45 to 100 metres. In a single cycle it can move up to 450 metric tonnes of material. The El Chino mine located near Silver City, New Mexico is an open-pit copper mine Open-pit mining refers to a method of extracting rock or minerals from the earth by their removal from an open pit or borrow. ... The United States dollar is the official currency of the United States. ... The metre, or meter, is the basic unit of length in the International System of Units (SI: Système International dUnités). ...

A notable feature of mining draglines is that they are not fuel powered like most other mining equipment. Their power consumption is so great that they have a direct connection to the high-voltage grid at 11 kV. Many (possibly anecdotal) stories have been told about the blackout-causing effects of mining draglines. For instance, there is a long-lived story that, back in the 1970s, if all 7 of Peak Downs (a very large coal mine in central Queensland, Australia) draglines turned simultaneously, they would black-out all of North Queensland. For the workstation, see SGI Fuel. ... The difference between high voltage and low voltage depends on the situation and on the field of science or industry involved. ... This article provides extensive lists of events and significant personalities of the 1970s. ... Motto: Audax at Fidelis (Bold but Faithful) Nickname: Sunshine State/Smart State Other Australian states and territories Capital Brisbane Government Governor Premier Const. ...

In all but the smallest of draglines, movement is accomplised by 'walking' using pontoons, as caterpillar tracks place too much pressure on the ground, and have great difficultly under the immense weight of the dragline. Maximum speed is only up to a few hundred metres per hour. If travelling medium distances, (about 30-100 km), a special dragline carrier can be brought in to transport the dragline. Above this distance, disassembly is generally required. A pontoon boat, like this small pleasure boat, typically floats and balances by means of two pontoons oriented in the direction of travel. ... Caterpillar tracks are large (modular) tracks used on tanks, construction equipment and certain other off-road vehicles. ...

Limitations

The primary limitations of draglines are their boom height and boom length. This limits where the dragline can dump the waste material. They do not have great accuracy when it comes to vertical waste removal, so the dragline will never be used for coal removal, so as to minimise coal loss and dilution. Inherent with their construction, a dragline is most efficient excavating material below the level of their tracks, a dragline is not suitable to load piled up material (like a wheel loader can). Efficiency is the capability of acting or producing effectively with a minimum of waste, expense, or unnecessary effort. ... A loader clearing a landslide. ...

Despite their limitations, and their extreme capital cost, draglines remain popular with many mines, due to their reliability, and extremely low waste removal cost.

Examples

The British firm of Ransome and Rapier produced a few large (1400-1800 ton) excavators, the largest in Europe at the time. Power was from internal combustion engines driving generators. One, named SUNDEW, was used in a quarry from 1957 to 1974. After its working life at the first site in Rutland was finished it walked 13 miles to a new life at Corby, the walk took 9 months. Rutland is traditionally Englands smallest county and is bounded on the west and north by Leicestershire, northeast by Lincolnshire, and southeast by Northamptonshire. ... Corby is an industrial town and a local government district located 8 miles north of Kettering in Northamptonshire, England. ...

The coal mining dragline known as Big Muskie, owned by the Central Ohio Coal Company (a division of American Electric Power), was the world's largest mobile earth-moving machine, weighing nearly 13,000 metric tons and standing nearly 22 stories tall. It operated in the U.S. state of Ohio from 1969 to 1991, and was powered by 13,800 volts of electricity. The GEM of Egypt (GEM standing for "giant excavating machine" and Egypt referring to the Egypt Valley in eastern Ohio where it was first put to use), which operated from 1967 to 1988, was of comparable size.

References

K. Pathak, K. Dasgupta, A. Chattopadhyay, "Determination of the working zone of a dragline bucket - A graphical approach", Doncaster, The Institution of mining engineers, 1992.

Peter Ridley, Peter Corke, "Calculation of Dragline bucket pose under gravity loading", Mechanism and machine theory, Vol. 35, 2000.