Bucket chain excavator

A bucket chain excavator (BCE) is a piece of heavy equipment used in surface mining and dredging.

Bucket chain excavators remove material from below their plane of movement, which is useful if the pit floor is unstable or underwater.

[1] The first documented use of a bucket chain excavator was in 1859 by Alphonse Couvreux, a French entrepreneur.

The primary difference is that the buckets are mounted on a flexible chain similarly to a chainsaw blade rather than on a rigid wheel.

[3] BCEs vary in range and size, although the majority of them are extremely large, with some capable of excavating 14,500 m3/h.