Front end loader cleaving enormous slab of stone - GIF

[Jon]

Front end loader cleaving enormous slab of stone. Not sure why. Making quarry walls? Cutting dimensional stone? High-fiving the planet?




Previously:

Pre-hydraulic LeTourneau front end loader
heavy equipment moving granite
Rock grinder heavy equipment - GIF
Marble gang saw GIF
diamond wire stone cutting robot
Stone cutting machine - video

[Ralphxyz]

The question is: How was it cut?

Ralph

[mklotz]

Very puzzling, indeed.

They've taken the time and effort to wire saw a nice flat-sided slab but then they purposely tip it on to a berm of spoil that is guaranteed to fracture it into randomly shaped pieces.

If they were just clearing stone away, say for a road pass or some such, explosives would be faster and wire sawing would be a waste. If they just want random chunks of (sand?)-stone, again explosives would be more efficient.

It surely looks like a quarry, though, in which case the pictured operation is hard to understand.

[Ralphxyz]

Yeah Marv, I'd like to see the wire saw in action, it really does not make any sense to have it smash up.

Ralph

[mklotz]

Yeah Marv, I'd like to see the wire saw in action, it really does not make any sense to have it smash up.

Google marble quarrying or similar. Most marble is used for decorative purposes so being able to cut nicely-shaped blocks is very desirable.

Tipping large blocks onto cushions of spoil is a common practice in marble quarrying. However, in that case the blocks are much thicker and stronger and the spoil isn't arranged in a berm that will create bending forces on the slab.

The stone in the .gif looks like sandstone to me. I would expect it to be much weaker than marble so the fact that is shattered didn't surprise me. Perhaps that's the point of the .gif - this is not the way to lay down a slab of sandstone.

[Frank S]

Form the color I would say that Marv is correct I believe that having it fracture was a miscalculation though. I twould appear that they had intended the berm to serve as a cushion to arrest the fall and at the same time keep the slab high enough off the ground so they could get their lifting devices under it to lift it to a transport vehicle. Or more probably given the sixe of the slab, cut it into smaller pieces .Also note that just as it hits the berm we can see more of the berm in just wasn't propperly formed to catch the slab. Add in a couple of flaws and there was no way the slab was going to survive.

[Christophe Mineau]

Agree with Marv, for me, it looks like being a failure. seeing all the grounded material they seemed to have put purposely on the floor, maybe to damp the fall and probably wanting to keep the slab as a single piece.
But the second question would be for doing what with this kind of stone ?

[mklotz]

Agree with Marv, for me, it looks like being a failure. seeing all the grounded material they seemed to have put purposely on the floor, maybe to damp the fall and probably wanting to keep the slab as a single piece.
But the second question would be for doing what with this kind of stone ?

Sandstone is used for architectural purposes but, in the past, has been used for statuary and various implements.

You can learn, probably more than you ever wanted to know, here...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandstone#Uses

[Frank S]

Thanks Marv that is what I was going to comment

[Jon]