From giant chainsaws to fracking equipment, here are 13 of the most terrifying industrial
machines ever.
13.
Chain Trencher
A chainsaw on wheels.
That is the chain trencher.
Its job is to dig trenches by, essentially, cutting the ground.
This tool is often used for construction crews that want to lay pipe.
One model of chain trencher, the Tesmec TRS 1675 can dig trenches up to 24 feet deep and
twenty-six feet wide.
With a tool like that, it shouldn’t be surprising that trench work can be dangerous.
A man working on a construction crew in Guam was killed when he fell into the trench and
was struck by the trenching machine.
12.
Shellfish-Shucking Machines
In 2014 a man was violently killed after he was caught in a shellfish-shucking machine.
He was cleaning the machine and got caught in a rotary turbine engine.
Police said it took the fire department nearly an hour to free the man’s body after partially
dismantling the machine.
He was pronounced dead on the scene.
There are many inherent dangers in working with machines regardless of the years of experience
you may have.
Any little mistake or malfunction can cause injury or death, even when working with shellfish.
11.
The Walking Tree Harvester
This thing is unnecessarily scary looking.
And if you are a tree it is truly terrifying.
The idea behind this next machine is quite simple.
Harvesters cut down trees and sometimes need to go places where wheels would be a very
bad idea.
To compensate for such terrain, the walking harvester was created as a kind of lumberjack.
Developed in the 1990s, the machine is able to walk because of sensors in its legs.
These sensors react automatically to soft, sloping, or uneven terrain.
A computer control system distributes weight and supports all six legs equally.
The machine walks over obstacles and the operator adjusts the ground clearance and height for
each step.
Walking harvesters also wreck less havoc on the environment than the traditional harvester
on treads.
Well, besides the fact that it was made to eat the forest.
10.
The Feller Buncher
It’s a machine with a giant claw that has a saw attachment.
A logging harvester like the one discussed a moment ago the feller buncher can cut through
trees, picks them up, rips off the branches, and sets them aside.
It can take down two trees in six seconds.
Imagine those are people and things start getting very scary.
9.
The Forage Harvester
This could come in handy for the zombie apocalypse.
A forage harvester (also known as a silage harvester, forager or chopper) is a farm implement
that harvests forage plants to make silage.
Silage is grass, corn or other plant used for feeding livestock.
This farming tool looks like a lawnmower on steroids.
It can either be a dedicated machine or a tool that can be attached to a tractor.
In 2008, twenty-nine year old Justin Jantzen, a farm hand, was run over by a forage harvester
and died.
The details of his death are unclear but it’s enough to make you think twice before getting
close to this machine.
8.
Tunnel Boring Machine
Also known as a "mole", tunnel boring machines excavate tunnels with a circular cross section
through anything from hard rock to sand.
The largest tunnel boring machine is Bertha, which has a boring width of 57 feet 3 inches
and is currently burrowing underneath Seattle.
As of March 2017, it’s only 1000 feet from completing its job but work has ceased because
the machine appears to be several inches off course.
Tunnel boring machines are an alternative to drilling and blasting methods in rock and
conventional "hand mining" in soil.
They don’t disturb the surrounding ground and they create a smooth tunnel wall, which
reduces cost and makes them perfect to use in heavily urbanized areas.
However, they are also incredibly expensive.
Elon Musk has tweeted an image of a tunnel boring machine he hopes to use to create underground
roads.
It was an idea that came to him while being stuck in LA traffic.
While these pieces of machinery are expensive but useful, accidents do happen.
In 2013, a man in Ireland was killed while a tunnel boring machine was in use.
7.
The Continuous Rock Miner
A continuous rock minor is a machine with a large rotating steel drum equipped with
tungsten carbide teeth that scrape coal from the seam.
Operating in a “room and pillar” system – where the mine is divided into a series
of 20-to-30 foot “rooms” or work areas cut into the coalbed – it can mine as much
as five tons of coal a minute – more than a miner of the 1920s would produce in an entire
day.
Continuous miners use conveyors to transport the removed coal from the seam.
Remote controlled continuous miners are used to work in a variety of difficult seams and
conditions and robotic versions controlled by computers are becoming increasingly common.
All of this sounds wonderful until you see the thing.
It looks like a forager but for underground.
Since 1984, there have been 35 deaths where miners have been pinned, crushed, or struck
by continuous mining machines in underground coal mines.
6.
Bagger 288
Welcome to the single largest land vehicle on Earth: the Bagger 288.
It is a 13,500 ton beast that chews up mountains.
The Bagger 288 is a 315-foot high, 721-foot long bucket-wheel excavator, built by the
Krupp company for the German mining firm, Rheinbraun.
It originally operated at the Tagebau Hambach (Hambach strip mine) in Western Germany, where
it removed layers of top soil from coal seams prior to mining.
It also mines coal.
While at the Hambach strip mine, the Bagger 288 used its 8-story tall impeller to scoop
up to 240,000 tons of coal per day.
If you take your standard soccer field and dig down 98 feet within its boundaries, that's
about what the Bagger 288 pulls out of the ground everyday.
That's enough to fill 2400 coal wagons and completely exhaust the coal supply at Tagebau
Hambach in just 23 years.
It now works at a new site in Garzweiler and helps to produce 100 million tons of coal
a year.
If it looks a little familiar, it’s probably because you’ve seen it before.
The machine has made an appearance in Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance and The Hunger
Games: Catching Fire.
5.
The Godzilla Saw
The Godzilla saw, which operates in Kazakhstan, towers over 300 feet, weighs over 45,000 tons,
costs $100 million, and can scoop 4,500 tons of coal per hour.
It’s used at a strip coal mine that was built in 1969.
This mine has been so productive in pulling coal that in 1985, it was put into the Guinness
Book of World Records.
Why is it so scary?
Well, just look at it….
4.
Car Shredder
Ever wondered what happened to your car after leaving it at a junk yard?
Today, scrap metal is at a premium.
To help meet demand, cars at the end of their lives are shredded.
The biggest of them can eat 450 cars in an hour.
In Newport, Wales, the LYNXS automotive shredder works out of one of the largest facilities
of its kind.
The plant is run by the Sims Group UK.
The LYNXS works like a conventional shredder while being the size of a Brontosaurus.
Cars are first crushed to reduce their volume, then fed into the machine.
The feeder pipe allows large chunks of scrap to pass through to the shredding area while
a Twin Roll Compression Feeder prevents too much material from hitting the shredder at
the same time and clogging the mechanism.
A series of huge, rapidly-spinning hammers—powered by a 40 ton high voltage electric motor—tear
the vehicle into fist sized chunks..
It is so big and so powerful, it had to be wired directly into the Welsh national power
grid to draw sufficient current.
What comes out of the shredder is "high-density uniform fragmentized scrap".
The machine is capable of handling a wide variety of materials.
After being shredded, the plastics, rubber, carpet and glass pieces are separated and
sent off for separate recycling.
The metal, copper, ferrous and non-ferrous scrap, and aluminum are then exported globally.
About 60 percent will reach South East Asia, where the demand for scrap is highest.
The company exports roughly 2.5 million tons of metal annually.
On the other side of the pond, there is the Mega Shredder in New Jersey.
It is run by the same company and can consume 4,000 tons of metal in a day and spit out
between 2,800 and 3,000 tons of steel, aluminum, copper, brass and a mishmash they call zorba.
3.
ACCO Super Bulldozer
The ACCO super bulldozer is the largest bulldozer ever built.
It was manufactured by the Italian ACCO for Lybia in 1980.
The 40 ft (12 m) long vehicle has a 23 by 9 ft blade (7 by 2.7 m) and two Caterpillar
engines.
Only one example was built, but it never arrived to Lybia because the UN adopted a trade embargo
against the country.
Never used, it was tucked away into a storage for almost thirty years.
Recently, it was moved away from the abandoned facility two years ago and restored.
2.
Caterpillar 797
The Caterpillar 797 is a series of off-highway trucks.
These are two-axle, mechanical powertrain haul trucks and were manufactured specifically
for high-production mining and heavy-duty construction.
In production since 1998, the 797 series represents Caterpillar’s largest, highest capacity
haul trucks.
The current, third-generation model, the 797F, offers one of the largest haul capacities
in the world, up to 400 tons.
Moving a 797 requires dis-assembly, loading onto semi-trailer trucks, transport and re-assembly
at the new location.
In order to haul the various parts of the truck, it takes up to thirteen semi-trailer
loads.
If a 797 must be moved from one jobsite to another for any reason, it cannot be driven
on public roads due to its size and weight.
1.
Fracturing Pumpers
At first glance, this equipment is small and unassuming.
It’s not huge or prone to kill the people around it if they become careless.
There are no Guinness World Record holders for fracturing (or frac) pumpers.
However, it’s the end result that makes these rather ordinary looking pieces of equipment
so very terrifying.
While a study showed that earthquakes are induced mostly by the injection of wastewater
into the ground, something done at all well drilling operations, a study concluding that
fracking still has a part to play.
Yes, these unassuming pieces of equipment are part of the reason why certain states
have been having an above average amount of earthquakes.
To reach rocks at deeper depths, miners have to get around the immense amount of pressure
being applied by overlaying rock layers.
To do that, fluids are introduced using fracturing pumpers.
This process is called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, and is done using an encased
wellbore.
The U.S. Geological Survey claims that injecting wastewater into the ground is mainly responsible
for earthquakes.
Wastewater is produced by all oil drilling sites.
However, a new study suggested that fracking may have a larger part to play.
A University of Calgary geologist pointed that small earthquakes occurred before and
after a fracking and are confined to a small area.
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