The K-46 Bucket-Wheel Excavator

When you visit the Bełchatów mine, it's impossible not to notice the enormous machines working in the pit. Looking at the sheer scale of the mine itself, you can feel like a dwarf — and all the more so when you see excavators bigger than tower blocks and conveyor belts that reach all the way to the horizon.

One of the largest working machines is the K-46 overburden excavator. It weighs about 5,600 tonnes and stands almost 60–80 metres tall (different models). It is a bucket-wheel excavator. It is characterised by a continuous digging process, equipped with many digging vessels (buckets or scrapers) placed at equal intervals on a chain or wheel.

The excavator's job is removing the overburden of earth to reach the brown coal deposit. The excavators working in the mine were manufactured in the 1970s and 1980s. Some of them have been working for over 35 years now, and according to the mechanics and engineers they can work just as long again.

These machines move very slowly. Covering 6 kilometres takes them about a week, and when crossing an asphalt road, a crossing of sand has to be heaped up so as not to damage the road. A single excavator is powered by 30,000 V.