The type of excavation equipment used totally depends on the kind of construction happening. Having said that, the scope of work and the location of the excavation do have many things in common across the various construction sites. This means there are general excavation equipment and there is special excavation equipment that are used in conjunction to complete a construction work.
These are highly powerful machines that are built on the frame of tractors. With crawler or caterpillar tracks fitted, they can work in any terrain. These have a large mouldboard or a blade attached in the front to push the ground and do the excavating by stripping.
This is a vehicle that has exaction equipment attached to both front and back. One of the most common features in any construction site, it has a hydraulic controlled boom and sticks in the back as well as a hydraulic controlled bucket in the front. It provides multiple degrees of freedom to dig, excavate and remove the earth from various depths and heights.
Used mostly in the rural areas, these are powerful vehicles with various fittings that can be used to tow, dig, loosen the earth, etc. during construction and for excavating the area.
When it comes to excavating the earth of the hardest type, a power shovel is used. It can also be sued to dig the earth on a hillside or under the natural ground level. Mounted on crawler tracks, this equipment is made up of boom, dipper stick, mounting, a cab and a hoist line.
When a large area has to be worked on and excavating the site using traditional equipment can be time-consuming, a scraper is deployed. This is a self-sufficient machine that can dig earth, load it, haul it across, and discharge the material with uniformity, layer by layer.
When there is soft earth involved, draglines are the best. When the excavating needs to be done below the ground or if the load needs to be deposited into wagons, this equipment is used.
It is a huge bucket which is in two halves. The two halves are hinged together at the top and the whole setup is attached to a boom of dragline or to shovel crane unit. Whenever there is a need to excavate dirt from a water body or to haul material from a hole, this equipment is used.
When you have a lot of rocks to remove from an area, you can use a ripper instead of the alternative of drilling and blasting which is not only time-consuming but also costly. Both wheels mounted and tow-type rippers are available that can be pulled by a tractor.
No matter what the requirement is, a lot of excavation equipment is used interchangeably across various sites. The equipment can be fitted on various vehicles to get the job done hence a specialized piece of machinery is not always required.