Never assume the top was fully screwed on, make sure to turn to the right until it can’t anymore so you know you have the full 16 rotations to the left
Any truth to this? I doubt it but still…I wouldn’t know.
No. The joint isn’t threaded, it’s a slew ring. Think of it like a wide diameter ball bearing (rod bearing? Pin bearing? Not sure about the English word…) with some extra locking mechanisms to hold the top part in place.
What happened here is most likely a damaged or worn slew ring.
Source: I helped replace the busted slew ring on a ships crane once.
There’s a remote risk of this catastrophic failure happening due to bad maintenance, installation, or building, but there’s no risk of this happening due to normal rotation/swing. In other words, assuming the machine is in good working order and used for realistic applications, this will never happen.
Here’s a video that explains how excavators achieve infinite swing angle without tangling the hydraulic hoses that go to the motors in the tracks. The dude in the video knows his stuff.
Tom Scott has a video of a rotating house, the plumbing uses the same logic there, they made some nice animations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gisdyTBMNyQ
Thanks for sharing, it is really cleverly beautiful!
I always wanted to build this in Luanti
Interesting thank you.
I’ve heard it’s one of those ways they haze new operators.
This is actually really scary. I would not want to be the operator when the top falls off.
That’s not typical, mind you
Just made a post it note and put on my wall for the next time I’m operating a full sized construction excavator
Don’t let your memes be dreams. They just leave them parked everywhere.
That’s beautiful … whenever I see construction guys on the highway packing up a piece of heavy machinery I tell my wife that these guys could be stealing that excavator / tractor / packing machine / dump truck / whatever in broad day light and no one would notice a thing.
Everyone on the highway just ignores these people like they don’t exist and a gang can just pull up with a flatbed, jack a machine, load it up professionally, drive it away to the other side of the country and resell it somewhere else or tear it apart for parts to resell.
Plus, you don’t want to get dizzy! You gotta rotate the other way around to be a pro.
