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This
open pit mine excavator, dubbed Super Shovel at the time, was built and
commissioned in July of 1962. The 150 cubic yard bucket could dig up the
earth the size of a 2-car garage and dump it 450 feet away in less than a
minute [40 seconds to be exact]. Bucyrus-Erie Co. of Milwaukee built it for
Peabody Coal Co. for coal mining in western Kentucky. It required more than 300
railroad cars to transport all the mechanical and electrical equipment and
eleven months to build it at the mine site. Its electrical power
requirements alone equal that of a town of 15,000 people. It removed 36
million cubic yards of dirt and rock each year and uncovered 14,000 tons of
coal per day [enough to heat 7,500 average homes for one month]. Newly introduced
SCRs [Thyristors] were used for power amplifiers to control the fields of
DC rotating exciters which controlled the field of large DC generators
which, in t urn, controlled the high power multiple DC motors for the
hoist, swing and crowd motions of the bucket. Westinghouse Electric
Corporation produced all the electrical equipment. Mohammed Safiuddin
designed the control and automation system, including SCR amplifiers. After
over thirty years of operation, the mammoth excavator was buried in an excavated
mine hole.
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