A bucket-wheel excavator (BWE) is a large heavy equipment machine used in surface mining.  They use a large wheel consisting of a set of continuous buckets to continually dig up material as the wheel turns.  They are some of the largest vehicles ever produced with the current record holder for BWEs weighing at 14,200 metric tons.

h4. See also

* [[Bucket chain excavator]]
* [[Excavator]]

h4. External links

* "Wikipedia - Bucket-wheel excavator":[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucket-wheel_excavator]
bucket-wheel excavator