ok

Not the largest that goes to big Muskie

@@Leatherface123. Muskie was a dragline, and different than these.

@@fallguye6011 I know But still if we count both

It´s really dumb and slow this prozess bigger tracks would cleary safe some time and money from: random engineer to: -

Well, when you only need to move it once a year, there's no need to spend the huge amount of money it would take to make it go fast.

Far more important than the mere metal was the engineering, the labor, the factories, the steel mills, and the matrix of parts that went into the Silver Spade. The capital investment can never be recovered and America couldn't build another machine like this if our lives depended on it.

Maybe, but would the extra engineering be worth it? The machine was built tough, and moving those mats would probably be as easy for the machine as picking up a book would be for a person. The money they save on not building a little crane can be put towards maintenance of the whole machine, ya know?

the rollers that broke were repaired numerous times was the swing gear and pivot assy of the machine house, so the whole upper machine it trying to move would be unstable and potentially cause a massive fatal accident if the upper works fell off its base

Good points but, where would the preservation group get the parts? China? The industrial powerhouse America that built the Silver Spade is long gone. Furthermore, we couldn't build another giant power shovel or mega dragline if our lives depended on it. The industrial matrix is gone and we don't have the workforce to do it either. Let alone the industrial habits that we once had 50-60 years ago.

It sure seems like it, but they wanted to be able to tear hard rock with the hardened teeth on that bucket, and it would make some serious noise, I've read, when doing so, and the huge spring-loaded idler wheel frames, up where the cables exit the cabin, would be stretched out by strain of everyday work. The operator would watch those frames to know when he should lift the bucket a bit when he ran into especially hard material.

The dipper (bucket) is mostly limited by the strength of the cables, the amount of wear they sustain over 24/7 operation, and the strength of the crowding mechanism (the 'knee' the bucket is attached to, that pushes it directly into the rock). It's primarily why the power shovels fell out of favor; the draglines (since they were pulling, not crowding) could handle much bigger buckets, though they did better with softer overburden. Bucket wheel excavators, however, topped them all, and are the only sort of truly giant strip mining machine operating today. The Silver Spade was the last of her kind still running.

And that bucket dwarfs you It bigger than a semi

Bucket wheel not good in rock, Spade worked in rock, requiring it's design.

Your thinking of the captain 6360

Andy Wander To spread out the weight of the machine.

the captain

@Mike Wasylkewicz You replied to a 6 year old comment, you moron.

Big Muskie was the biggest

@@numbersstationsarchive194 nobody fucking Cares how old the comment was that he replied to. The fact of the matter is that someone finally answered a six year old question, jackass

Big Muskie was largest and a drag line machine, also in Ohio, about 60 miles from the Spade location

Sodiumreactor yes

ford nut if a coffee cup could hold a 100+ tons quicker loading= more money that's it. That's why these monsters are built. Production is key

Well, think about a man with a shovel. How big is the man, compared to the shovel he uses? Probably just about the same ratio as this big machine.