What is this used for, and what is it called?

Took these pics about 10 years ago. It was at a lake, where they vacuumed sand off the bottom using a floating pipeline. There was a bunch of these there. I took pics, because if I remember right, each of the engines on these had (6) GM 671 blowers on them. Talk about power!

<img src="http://www.snowplowing-contractors.com/images/heavyequip1.jpg">

<img src="http://www.snowplowing-contractors.com/images/heavyequip2.jpg">

Anyone have any ideas what these are called?


~Chuck


[Edited by ChucksChevyPages on 11-06-2000 at 05:48 AM]

 

Ok Chuck, We call them "pans" or "scrapers" Yhey are self loading earth movers, with dual engins. Don't know the model # on these or how much they will move but around here most are in the 14 cu. yds and up size, If the dirt is hard you can push them with a Cat D-8 so you can load faster.

 

but I'll expand on it a little bit. If you have a large area with some high and low spots, its easy to take your scraper and knock down the high spots (it picks the dirt up and puts it in the belly) and you can dump it out and spread it while moving into the low spots. Thats what we use it for most here on Germany. In Guam, we had one at our landfill to scrape up coral to use in our landfill. We would scarify the natural coral ground with a CAT D-9 Dozer than run the scraper with the dozer assisting in pushing to cut the rest of the coral up.

Its also used when building new roads where there is a lot of cutting and filling instead of hauling the dirt away.


But best of all......they're fun as hell!

 

This one looks like a Terex but the colors not so good, was is a really bad lime green? We use these on occation mostly in a little smaller version. These can be bought in a variety of configurations, with one engine in the front or two like this one.They can be chain loaded where there is a steel belt that carries the material up in to the back or like this one where the material is just shoved in.The also have a push push set up that has bumpers and hooks that is used when in the cut.The way this works is there is a push block and hook on the back of each scraper and a big ring on front, the machines position themselves end to end and the ring is dropped over the hook.Then the front machine drops its pan into the cut and the rear sraper helps by pushing,when it is full that machine lifts its pan and the rear machine drops its pan and is pulled by the front machine through its cut they then disconnect dump and repeat.These work well in the proper soil but if it is wet the are skunked and have to be push alot with a push Dozer.In our part of the country we use more the pans attached to track machines. We have acompany here called McAnich and they use D11s with these huge drag scrapers that hold i think 50 yards and they load in somewhere in the range of 45 to 60sec. The D11s are $650,000 and the pans are around $350,000.And they have ten I think and then they have a bunch of D10s and Pans.They have like 144million dollars worth of construction Equipment.
Im glad Im not that big what a hassle.

 

Exactly digger! They are all sitting in a row, and a few not in the pics, are connected together. Yes, they are a bad lime green color. I think what they do at this site, is pump the sand off the bottom of the lake, and spread it out to dry. Then scrape it up with these. There is nothing but pure brown (cowbay, or "mason's sand") for about 30 acres around a lake that has to be 20 or 30 acres. The machines sit a lot. They must start up the whole operation when they need more sand. They haul it out in tandems year round. Then about every 2 or 3 years, they start pumping again. They have what appears to be a 'retention pit" that they pump into, and let the water drain off. Then go into the pit and scrape it up. Yes, it is very wet there too. We had a blast playing on quads and 3 wheelers there. I took my truck in, but it was all berms and tracks from quads and bikes. They didn't stop us from riding until they started the whole pumping operation again.

~Chuck

 

Looks like a Terex or an early Wabco scraper.