Called ?? 6,5/45, this “walking” excavator seems like coming straight out of a steampunk movie.
Nothing compares with the Soviet ‘Walking’ excavator to make you question whether if you are living inside a steampunk movie. It could be Howl’s Moving ‘Excavator’ too if you happen to be a movie enthusiast.
The video was uploaded in 2017 and showed an ancient piece of machinery going for a slow-paced daytime walk. The weirdly named ?? 6,5/45 was developed in the Soviet Union in 1969. And the video by Romeo Rum demonstrates ?? 6,5/45 walking at a slow speed given its immense weight of 280 tonnes.
You must be questioning why this big-sized excavator walks instead of having conventional tracks. As per the Drive, the answer to this dates back to the early 20th century.
After the drag-line excavators, some innovation was needed in civil engineering and surface mining. The former ones happened to sink in the ground at some incidences due to their heavyweight. Whereas the walking excavator ensured that the pressure on the ground is exerted so that they don’t get stuck.
This marked the success and met the desired purpose back in the time, making it a pretty interesting engineering marvel of the 60s.
