What is 30 stories tall, moves at a half a mile per hour and churns through 240,000 tons of rock every day? Bucket wheel excavators.

The most famous of which being the Bagger 288, bucket wheel excavators make shorter work of mines than typical drill and blast mining. The machine eats away at the rock, sorts out the coal and dumps the overburden all while being manned by 5-10 people.

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