- [Narrator] There's something
about watching mega machines at work that's inexplicably satisfying. But watching them carry out
precise, yet gargantuan tasks really scratches an itch
you didn't know you had! From dredging and trenching, to carving out perfect
tunnels underneath cities, it's time to grab a
hardhat and take a look at some extreme machines doing
some seriously perfect work! (air whooshing) Ponsse Harvesters. The word harvester alone probably
gets most of you thinking about combine harvesters,
which reap fields of crops like corn and wheat. But the harvesters that
Ponsse make reap something a little larger than corn! These logging machines
are daringly designed to take down entire trees,
and all without the operator ever stepping foot outside
of their comfy little cabin! How's that possible? Well, their Scorpion model, for example, works on eight, huge 26
½ inch tyres that carry the 25-ton vehicle up the sides of steep and uneven forest terrain. Here, it uses that massive mechanical arm to swing a harvester head around the base of a nearby tree. The heads the scorpion uses
weigh a whole ton on their own and contain every tool
needed to take a tree down! Once the tree is secured in its grip, a retractable chainsaw slices
the trunk from its base. Then it's turned sideways, and rollers slide the
tree through the head where a series of
razor-sharp delimbing knives slice off any branches. Considering how awesome this looks, I bet those operators find it really hard not to get carried away! Fortunately, these harvesters come with inbuilt measuring sensors
to ensure the lumberjacks don't try cutting down
trees that are too big for their machines to handle! Although, with the right
hands, they can handle a lot. The largest of Ponsee's harvesters heads known as an H10, is more than 7 ½ ft tall and can process logs that are
a whopping 3 ft in diameter! Now, if you appreciate the work of a well-oiled machine,
be sure to hit those like and subscribe buttons down below. Unlike a machine, I
don't have an off button, so you can be sure that I'll continue to make the most entertaining
and fact-filled videos available online! Now, what amazing
machine have we got next. (air whooshes) Kojimagumi Gosho Grab Dredger. Ever wondered how construction companies excavate underwater areas? Well, one of the simplest and
most oddly satisfying ways this is done is with a grab dredger. These machines rely on middle opening, clam-shell buckets that are attached to gigantic crane barges,
which are floated out to the areas that need excavating. These huge buckets are
dropped into the water and thanks to their sheer weight
sink down onto the seabed. Then, using hydraulics, they
scoop up soft materials, like sand and mud, and drag
it back up to the surface where it's deposited onto a waiting barge. As impressive as this operation looks, Kojimagumi's Gosho Grab Dredger takes this kind of excavation
to brand new heights or, should I say, depths! At almost 330 ft in
length and 120 ft wide, this massive machine weighs
in at a colossal 7,052 tons. That makes it the largest
and heaviest grab dredger in the world! Its behemoth bucket, which
weighs in at a staggering 370 tons on its own, can
work more than 150 ft beneath the waves. That's so heavy that, for perspective, it'd be like dangling
a large passenger jet at the bottom of the ocean! But once it gets there,
the bucket can scoop up over 7,000 cubic ft of sludge that's enough to fill
nearly 900 bath tubs. Well, considering it can haul up a maximum of 690 tons of sludge at a time, I wouldn't want to be
stood underneath this thing when it opens up! (air whooshing) Damen CSD 500. So, you've seen how grab dredging is done, but how do smaller, more precise
dredging operations work? Well, say hello to the Damen CSD 500 Cutting Suction Dredger. It may look like some
sort of torture device, but it's actually designed
to remove muck and mud from sea and riverbeds during mining and general dredging operations. So how does it work? Well, that intense-looking,
five-bladed cutting head is just over 5 ft in diameter and is covered with 70
separate little chisels. This can stretch out or
drill down more than 45 ft below the waterline, where
it digs up any debris in its way. As it churns up the earth and sand, the resulting slurry
is sucked up at a rate of more than 141,000 cubic feet per hour. That's enough to fill an
Olympic-sized swimming pool with sludge every 30 minutes! But this vessel is only
126 ft long and 26 ft wide, so where does this
Olympic amount of muck go? Well, discharge pipes
attached to the vessel can be laid out along the shore, dumping the excavated sand and sludge at designated depots further inland. Well, good luck to any Olympic athletes who decides to take a dip in that! (air whooshing) Colmar Rail Shear. If you had to guess, how
heavy would you think a yard of mainline railway track was? Weird question I know, but stick with me! Even though they're deceptively slim, they're made out of steel, meaning a single yard of modern track can weigh up to a staggering 140 lbs! With that in mind, how are
workers meant to dig up and clear such weighty tracks? Lucky for them, the
RP2000 Rail Shear exists! It may look like some
sort of metal dinosaur, but the jaws of this beast would put even the strongest T-Rex to shame. (steel snaps) Woah! It just snapped
that rail like a twig! Attached to a hydraulic arm, the almost 6 ft high cutting
head of this amazing machine weighs in at more than 2 ½ tons and it puts every ounce to good use. It grabs the rail horizontally
in its V-shaped grip, and through its heavy-duty hydraulics, it applies a mammoth 1000 tons of pressure to it, snapping it in twain. (metal breaking) Now that's what you call a power tool! (air whooshing) Big Boring Bertha. Have you ever wondered how
huge tunnels for subways and highways are carved
out underneath big cities? Well, massive infrastructure
projects like this are too big for one man and
a shovel to tackle alone, which is where Tunnel Boring Machines, like Bertha here come in to help. Bertha was a 325 ft long, nearly 7,000-ton behemoth boring machine
that was used to dig a 1.7-mile tunnel under
the city of Seattle. The $80 million machine
was shipped over from Japan back in 2013, and the
massive 57 ½ ft cutting wheel was fired up later that same year. As it ground its way through the earth, the blades carried the
debris through a screw turn which traveled back through the machine and out of its way. Using hydraulic jacks, Bertha lay a series of concrete segments behind her, matching the tunnel curvature. Once each new concrete ring was in place, the jacks could push against
them and propel Bertha forward, leaving a completely sealed, near-60 ft diameter tunnel behind it. But it was essential that
this work didn't send any dangerous tremors
through the city above, so it could only slowly chew through 35 ft of earth a day! However, just over 1000
ft into the project, damage to Bertha's cutterhead
meant it suddenly overheated and couldn't move! After a costly two-year delay,
a recovery pit was dug down in order to replace the cutterhead. Once in place Bertha was
finally put back to work, and two laborious years later in 2017 she finally broke through
to the other side! (walls breaking) (air whooshing) Bucket Wheel Excavators. A lot of these extreme
machines are pretty huge, but none of them come close
to the sheer size or spectacle of Bucket Wheel Excavators. These astonishing machines
are used to excavate the huge amounts of soil lining coal seams in open pit mining operations. The buckets efficiently
shovel up the dirt and, as the wheel rotates, drop
it onto a conveyor belt. The belt runs along the
length of the excavator's boom and dumps out the soil at the other end. They're absolutely astounding
to watch in action, but it's not until you get
a look at the Bagger 293 that you see how
impressive they really are. At 738 ft long, 151 ft wide, and a mammoth 314 ft high, this beast is one of the largest land vehicles in the entire world! From above, it may not seem all that big, but the wheel on its front is a gargantuan 70 ft in diameter alone, which is the same size as an
average six storey building! As it rotates, the 18 buckets on its wheel scoop up almost 20 cubic
yards of earth each. That means in about 163
scoops, or just 9 rotations, this thing can shovel up enough earth to fill an entire Olympic swimming pool! While you'll never see
one of these steely titans filling up a pool, like some
sort of glorified pool boy, they certainly know how to make a splash. (air whooshing) Bucket Wheel Trenchers. Now, that brilliant bucket wheel design isn't just used to move
mind-boggling amounts of earth from mines. On a much smaller scale, that
efficient excavation wheel can be used in machines like this Allcons EW200 Trencher. Just like its Bagger brother,
the buckets on this machine scoop up earth as it's driven forward. Then it dumps the earth onto
a much smaller conveyor belt where it's shot off to the side, leaving a perfectly
cleared trench in its wake. It can continuously excavate
up to 11,300 cubic feet of earth an hour, which is enough to fill
about 1,400 bathtubs! With a trapezoidal mould
trailing behind it, the resulting trench can
be sculpted into a V shape, ready to be lined with concrete to make a well-sealed gutter or canal. But if you need a regular
trench dug without a fancy V shape, then Tesmec's 1475 XL EVO Bucket Wheel
Excavator's got you covered! Like the EW200, it scoops up earth using that huge 13 ft diameter wheel while moving at a top speed of just 1.5 miles per hour. Even though its wheel is
about a fifth the size of the Bagger 293, it's
still about one storey tall, and can dig 9 ft down into the earth! So, the trenches it digs are
perfect for laying thick cables and pipelines without having to upheave huge swathes of earth. Well, I don't know about you, but I reckon operating this
thing would be buckets of fun! (air whooshing) Tesmec Chainsaw Trencher. Now, if you need a trench
digging through harder, rockier ground, the most efficient
type of machine available is also luckily, one of
the most badass looking! This is the Tesmec 1475 Chain Trencher, a 100-ton excavator
that has the added bonus of looking like a supersized chainsaw! Unlike its bucket wheeled brothers, the spiked conveyor of
this excavator is set on a hydraulic hinge,
meaning it can pivot down much deeper into the rocks below. As the spiked train of its conveyor tracks chew through the rocks,
the hinge allows it to dig down to a maximum depth of 16 ft! Once it's churned the
rocks up, the loose debris is carried onto a
separate conveyor system, which is then shot out of
the side of the machine. Even though it works through
much tougher sediments than the bucket wheel excavators, it can still drag up
more than 7,000 cubic ft of stone per hour. That's enough to fill the
average trailer of not one, but two 18 wheelers! Not only that, but I
bet it would double up as one heck of a weapon. That'd definitely give King
Kong an edge against Godzilla! (air whooshing) Kemroc Cutter Wheel. While bucket wheel and
chainsaw trencher designs are great for excavating wide gutters, the need for narrow trenches requires a more precise approach. And that's where the
Kemroc SMW Cutter Wheels come in! Attached to a hydraulic excavator, the largest of these
spiked wheels reaches over 8 ft in diameter and can
cut down more than 3 ft into hard surfaces like asphalt. When the required depth has been reached, the wheel is then pulled along
by moving the excavator arm or by driving the
excavator slowly backwards. With a blade that's just
under 6 inches wide, the narrow slot trench it
leaves makes it perfect for laying cables without
needing to dig up an entire road! And thanks to that large metal cover, loose rocks being dug up don't
fly out in every direction. Instead, debris is fed up
to that chute at the back, where it's deposited neatly
on the side of the road. Man, that wheel can dig through asphalt like a hot knife through butter! But Kemroc also makes cutting wheels that can slice through
much more than asphalt! Its DMW series, like
the SMW, boasts wheels with a maximum diameter of around 8 ft. But with a maximum width of 1.3 ft, these wheels can exert
more than a tremendous 10,000 lbs of force! This allows them to
effortlessly and satisfyingly cut through materials like solid rock, and even reinforced concrete! (air whooshing) Tree Crushers. In Dr Suess' famous story of "The Lorax", an entire forest is cleared
by funny fictional machines which look too hilarious to be real. But astonishingly, forest
crushing machines do exist, though they're definitely
not fit for a kids story! Like the lovechild of a steamroller and a chainsaw, these badass behemoths were designed back in the
1950's to barrel through forests and take out everything in their path. They may all look huge, but the
undisputed daddy of them all was the LeTourneau G175 tree crusher! At 56 ft long, and 35 ft wide, the steely behemoth
weighed in at a colossal 175 tons, making it the largest
tree crusher ever built! In place of wheels, it
rolled around on two huge, spiked rollers that crushed
any and all foliage before it. It was transported to Canada back in 1964 to help clear a section of land for the Kennedy Siding airstrip. However, it was so big
it took six rail cars to transport it, and then
required a phenomenal four days just to offload it! As more manageable
machines were developed, the G175 became obsolete, and
crushed its very last tree back in 1975. Today, it can be found in British Colombia as a tourist attraction, and
even though it's no longer in action, its spiked rollers still leave one heck of an impression, although it does make for some pretty hilarious photo
opportunities as well! (air whooshing) Amazing ArmorFlex. Sometimes, machines are
only partially responsible for the perfect work they do, as proven by materials like ArmorFlex. These are interlocking concrete blocks are connected ingeniously
by a set of steel cables, linking them together
like large stony mats. So, instead of having workers
haul each heavy 32 lb block from the truck to the ground, this simple solution allows
cranes to effortlessly lift the mats into place! It was this strangely satisfying technique that was used to line
the low water crossings of the California Valley
Solar Ranch back in 2011. The crossings needed to
support construction traffic, so a series of loose
blocks simply wouldn't do. Instead, the construction
company purchased a series of 8 x 21 ft ArmorFlex mats, which each weighed more than a ton! Even so, with a few excavators fitted with specially modified arms, five of these mats were laid
down and locked together in less than 3 hours! Wow, does this look like
the world's most extreme Lego set to anyone else? (air whooshing) Astonishing Aerial Saw. Can you think of anything more terrifying than seeing a giant circular saw headed right towards you? Well, how about if 10
of them were attached to a helicopter while
slicing through a forest just a few feet away from you? (helicopter chuffing) Oh my god, how come that
lady is standing so close and why isn't she running away? Despite what it looks like, this isn't a rogue helicopter pilot with a grudge against greenery. That menacing device is actually
a Helicopter Aerial Saw, a tool that's flown along remote locations to trim back overgrown trees in the way of things like
train tracks and powerlines. This design utilizes a 20 ft
shaft that carries upwards of 10 separate circular saws. Altogether, this sharp setup
weighs a whopping 830 lbs, and is carried about 90
ft below the helicopter hoisting it into the air. For perspective, that's like swinging an average sized elephant
off an 8-storey building, except this elephant is also
covered with super sharp blades that could easily cut you in half! As dangerous as it sounds,
the aerial saw isn't just left to dangle around in the wind! It's attached to a mechanical boom pole that's connected to the helicopter, which can be remotely
controlled by the pilot inside! With the push of a button, the blades which are powered by
a 28-horsepower engine spin at a staggeringly fast
4000 rotations per minute. That's more than 66 times per second! No wonder it makes such quick
work of all those trees. (machine grinding) (air whooshing) Vermeer Compost Turner. For anyone who doesn't have a green thumb, compost is a natural substance made by decomposing organic materials, like food waste and plant matter, into a nutrient rich fertilizer. It's important to turn the
compost to ensure fresh air and essential microbes
reach every inch of it. But at huge industrial
facilities like this, how is anyone meant to
turn that much compost? That's where the hilariously
specific Vermeer CT718 Compost Turner comes in. At 18 ft wide, this rolling rectangle has a 7 ft tall arch in the middle, known as a windrow that
passes over the long line of aerating compost. As it does, a specialized
drum at its center covered in stocky steel
flails, rotates around, mixing up the compost at
the very center of the pile. Despite being churned up,
the shape of the windrow keeps the compost in its neat little rows as the turner passes over, all while efficiently aerating it! And thanks to all its fancy features, this mega machine can process a whopping 108,000 cubic ft of compost an hour. For perspective, that's enough to fill 257 standard shipping containers
with compost every 60 minutes! Now that would be one
heck of a dirty load. (air whooshing) Rotary Snow Ploughs. At a glance, the massive blades attached to the front of this
train make it look like an insane war wagon that could
cut up anything in its path! (train chuffing) Jeez, that was one brave cameraman! Fortunately for him, these types of trains aren't designed to cut up people. These railed units are
rotary snow ploughs, which are deployed to clear train tracks when the snow gets impossibly deep. Using those large circular
blades at their front, they cut through massive snowbanks blocking up tracks in chilly climates! As they grind their way forward, the centrifugal force of the blades chews the snow up and
spits it out of the side. One of the largest bladed
beasts to have ever been built is the 1966 Union Pacific
Rotary Snowplough. At a gargantuan 183 tons, this thing weighs the same
as 62 African elephants, and is the heaviest
snowplough of its kind. A 3000-horspower engine drives
those enormous 12 ft blades, which can spin round at a whopping 150 rotations per minute, making easy work of even
the tallest snowbanks! But it's not a self-propelled vehicle, and being that heavy
means it can take up to four locomotives to push
it through the snow. And even then, it can
only reach a top speed of 6 mph! In those treacherous conditions, I guess snow and steady wins the race. Pecém Power Plant. When I say, renewable energy, I bet most of you start
thinking about solar panels and wind turbines. But in Latin America,
there's an innovative machine promising to bring a wave of change to the way we harness
the power of the sea! This is the Coppe Subsea Wave
Power prototype generator, which was installed back in 2012 off the Brazilian Port of Pecém. Those two yellow mechanical
arms stretch 72 ft out into the sea, each
of which is connected to a large buoy that's
roughly 32 ft in diameter. They look a little out of
place on the shoreline, a bit like two ocean sized soup spoons rather than ground-breaking
renewable energy tech. But there's much more going
on beneath the surface! As the waves hit the buoys,
the arms move up and down, working a series of hydraulics that circulate fresh water confined in a high-pressure pump. The resulting water jet sprays
onto an attached turbine, which in turn powers a generator! Through this process, the
two waving arms on their own can generate up to 100
kilowatts of electricity. Currently, that's not even
half of what it would take to power one standard home for a month, but it's a promising start. After all, Brazil has 4,600
miles of usable coastline that could host a project like this! Although the thought of
this country sporting a bright yellow fringe might take a little getting used to! (air whooshing) Superior Slipformers. In the world of construction,
very few processes can be as satisfying to
watch as slipforming. This is a little-known
technique where concrete is poured out onto a
continuously moving surface and shaped by a machine, like the ingeniously
designed Gomaco GP-2400! It works by placing a
measured supply of concrete in front of the paver,
which is then spread, shaped, and consolidated
at a specific height. Raised up on a telescopic
frame, the GP-2400 can stretch up to a
staggering 24 ft across while being carried by up
to four caterpillar tracks. These allow it to inch forward
at a maximum operating speed of just 44 ft per minute, leaving a singular slab
of concrete in its wake! But Gomaco didn't just
build in straight lines or in this case, slabs. The GP-2600 slipform paver was fitted with a custom build trapezoidal mold in order to line the dipped dimensions of Turkey's Batman Canal. Pre-mixed concrete was
transported to the paving site and discharged onto a conveyor, which pumped the concrete
into the paver's hoppers. As it moved forward, a chain trimmer refined the shape of the canal. On the other side of the mold, the wet cement was fed through
and flatted onto the trench, covering it evenly along
the sides and bottom! Even with so many complex
processes in action, this slipform machine
managed to lay almost 2000 ft of concrete a day! Although, the GP-2600 isn't
the only canal slipformer on the market! Allcons Series PC6000 concrete
hinge liner is so huge it can straddle canals
that are over 80 ft wide! While it works similarly to the GP-2600, the concrete conveyor belt
distribution system on its top allows this machine to lay more than 2600 cubic ft of concrete per hour! Assuming the concrete was
about a quarter foot thick, that'd be enough to cover
an entire football pitch in just 5 ½ hours! Now that would certainly make for one dirty game of football. Which of these machines
would you most like to see in action with you own eyes? And do you know of any others
that'd make my jaw drop? Let me know down in the comment below, and thanks for watching! (upbeat music)
