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A Walking Excavator or popularly Spider Excavator is a special type of all-terrain excavator. Like the regular excavator it consists of a boom, stick, bucket and cab on a rotating platform known as the "house". However, the house sits atop a different type of undercarriage. The undercarriage consists of leg or arm-like extensions with or without wheels. All can move in increments hence the name ''Walking Excavator''. This is different from an early 20th century dragline excavator where a set of feet plate are alternately lifted and lowered.〔(''A Walking Excavator'' ) The Literary Digest, July 29, 1916〕 ==History== Most traditional excavators have tracks or wheels as undercarriage which limits their usability on steep inclines, uneven tarrain or inaccessible positions. In 1966, Edwin Ernst Menzi (1897-1984) and Joseph Kaiser (1928-1993) together invented the walking excavator for work on mountain slopes. Subsequently, Kaiser AG, Schaanwal, Lichtenstein, and Menzi Muck AG, Kriessern, Switzerland, developed separately excavators.〔(''Walking Excavator and Mobility'' ) Unusual off-road locomotion website, September 2010〕 Despite the advantages of the design it failed to be widely used due to little gain in mobility, considering most work are in urban areas, less comfort, expensive design plus expensive electro-hydraulic control and maintenance.〔 In addition, the walking excavator is still not so well known to the general public.〔(''Unusual spider excavator, the Swiss-made Menzi Muck excavator, crawls on the hillside at Farm World'' ) Glenn Mulcaster, Machine The Weekly Times, April 2, 2014〕 Today, only walking excavators and forest harvester, like the Ecolog forest harvester or the TimberPro tilt cab are truly designed to move and work in mountains.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「Walking Excavator」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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