Top 5 structural failures

by Nick Drew | Tue 17 Feb 2015

Top 5 structural failures

Following a request on our Facebook page for more oops moments, in today’s blog I present a top 5 featuring some of the most impressive structural failures in the Digger Man Blog archives.

Wherever there are mechanical parts there are likely to be mechanical failures at some point, some machines will go on forever with no breakdowns and some maybe more prone to breakdowns than others. Here at number 5; we have a Cat motor grader which in all fairness has not had a structural failure at work, but has come off worse having been hit by a train on a level crossing with devastating effect!

At number 4; we see a Liebherr R 962 which appears to have suffered bolt failure causing the counterweight to fall off the back of the machine!

At number 3; we suspect a massive repair bill was expected to sort out this Le Tourneau wheeled loading shovel that has clearly broken its back in spectacular fashion!

At number 2; we have a Cat 330 L which has clearly snapped a dipper ram rod, possibly as a result of heavy hammer work.

And at number 1; this grainy photo has been doing the rounds on the internet for many years, but I still feel it’s a worthy winner in my all-time top 5. The ageing Komatsu has lost its dipper thanks to a massive structural failure on the boom whilst digging in heavy rock. One can imagine that went down with a hell of a bang!

With today’s modern equipment and computer aided design systems, structural failures are a lot less common than they used to be, so please, don’t have nightmares!

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