Some Important High-Selling Excavator Machines in the Construction Arena
The market potential for excavators in India seems to be very promising at the moment. Various market reports point out that the excavator market in India is slated to grow at a CAGR of 22 per cent over the period of 2013-2018, thanks to the growth of infrastructure and construction projects in the country.
Market analysts cite two major reasons behind this unprecedented growth of excavators in India. First, given the fact that excavators are highly versatile equipment and come with a myriad of attachments, they are the most sought-after equipment on any construction or mining job site. Second, with the growing awareness, customers are looking for a machine that is application-oriented and provides better productivity and cost-effective solutions and this could be none other than the excavator.
Excavator basics
Excavators fall under the heavy construction equipment category and are generally used for excavating various types of soils, carrying huge amounts of mud or debris and moving them carefully from one place to another. Further, excavators are also majorly used for crushing and levelling the ground surface for the construction purposes.
They consist of a boom, dipper or stick, bucket and cab on a rotating platform known as the house. This house sits on the top of an undercarriage with tracks or wheels. Excavators are usually employed together with loaders and bulldozers. Typically, excavators are steady, powerful and extremely work-efficient machines. There are different types of excavators which are used for a variety of applications like digging trenches, holes and foundations; material handling; forestry work; mulching; general grading/landscaping; construction, demolition, mining; river dredging etc.
List of prominent excavator machines used at construction cites
1. Crawler excavators: Also called as compact excavators, they are considered to be the fastest selling equipment in the excavator segment in the country at the present. As a matter of fact, in 2013, a total of 16,141 units of crawler excavators were sold and this figure is estimated to increase considerably to 50,091 units by 2018. Since these type of excavators offer higher horsepower, they are highly used at mining sites or for grading or landscaping hilly areas. Running on chain wheel system, they lift up the debris and soil though hydraulic power mechanism.
2. Long reach excavators: Having a long arm attachment and boom section, this strong equipment is usually used for the tough demolition tasks where breaking of tough walls and solid structures is required. This excavator’s long arms permits the machine’s operator to stay at a safe distance from the demolition site, yet perform the job successfully in minimum possible time.
3. Suction excavators: Also called as vacuum excavators, these types of excavators come with a pipe that is used to suck out loose soil and debris from the land through sharp teeth at the edge of the pipe. Before this excavator begins its excavation work, a water jet is used so as to loosen the mud or soil. This makes it easier for the machine’s suction pipe to suck the soil or debris. The suction excavators are used for exploration of underground elements.
4. Dragline excavators: Bigger in size and heavy-weighted as compared to other excavators, they are mainly used for large-scale construction projects which include surface mining, digging deep down the earth and other civil engineering tasks. Dragline excavators can further be of types i.e., standard mobile draglines and on-site draglines. On-site draglines are very huge in size and weight. Therefore, its separate parts are moved to the job site and it is there that it is assembled and built. They are generally used for canal dredging purposes. On the other hand, the standard ones are also bigger but are comparatively smaller than the on-site draglines.
5. Backhoes: They are the most common excavator machines used at the mining or construction sites. They have a bucket attached to the front part that faces the operator. The bucket extracts the soil by pulling it towards the driver before lifting. Although, smaller in size as compared to other excavators, they are used for various purposes. While there are many backhoes which offer good performance, Mahindra Construction Equipment’s (MCE) Mahindra EarthMaster VX backhoe model deserves a special mention as it exceeds expectation and boosts the overall performance to a very large extent. It features Banana Boom which offers 7 per cent more reach and 15 per cent higher dig depth at 4.22 meters as compared to other machines in the same segment. The banana boom supports a bigger bucket i.e., 0.27 cu. m bucket which is toughest in the industry. The equipment has priority built-in for bucket to enhance cycle time. Further, the joystick controls used to operate the boom makes it easy for the operators to comfortably operate for longer hours.
So, it can be concluded that a variety of excavator machines are used for varied purposes. Thus, it is important that you should know the different types and employ the right one at your construction site to get the best results.
