Bagger 293, also known as MAN TAKRAF RB293, was born in 1995, although it has been 28 years, it is still one of the largest vehicles ever built by man to mine coal.
This giant machine is manufactured by TAKRAF (Germany) and is part of the company’s range of vehicles of similar size and features such as the Bagger 281 (produced in 1958), Bagger 285 (made in 1975), Bagger 287 (produced in 1976), Bagger 288 (made in 1978)…
Bagger 293 is 225 meters long, 46 meters wide and 96 meters high, said to be the tallest vehicle on the ground.
Bagger 293 has a huge wheel with a diameter of 21 meters. This wheel is fitted with 18 buckets, each bucket has a volume of 15 m³ (equivalent to 16.5 tons of rock). When the machine is in operation, it spins a spinning wheel, shoveling and dumping dirt (or coal) onto a conveyor belt to feed the transport vehicles below.
It is estimated that Bagger 293 will dig an amount of soil and rock about 240,000 m³ (equivalent to 218,880 tons) in 1 day. The energy required for this huge machine to operate is equivalent to 16.56MW (megawatts), or 16.56 million W.
Bagger 293 has a weight of up to 14,200 tons, so it has a very low travel speed, about 0.1 km / h to 0.6 km / h in coal mines. To move to other coal mines, one must disassemble the parts of Bagger 293. Therefore, Bagger 293 operates only in the largest quarries in the world.
To operate this giant machine requires a team of 5 people. In which, 1 person is in the control position and 4 others manage the soil and rock conveyor belts.
Currently, this giant machine is located near Nuremberg, Germany.