4 ms·
The cost of those machines failing or worse getting stuck is enormous, they have very specific life span and are pretty much discarded even mid project if they
by dogma1138 6y ago
The cost of those machines failing or worse getting stuck is enormous, they have very specific life span and are pretty much discarded even mid project if they dug past their mileage.
These machines are also custom built for the diameter, soil type and probably a plethora of other variables so it’s unlikely that you could reuse them.
They are also not built to be recovered and reused from what I gather which complicates things further.
- baybal2 6y agoHmmm, doesn't seem so at all
- dogma1138 6y agoDoesn’t seem what?
- baybal2 6y agoDoesn't seem real. What's there to break? The cutters on the face of the TBM, and bearings would likely be replaced few times during boring. Aside from that, what's there to break? Hydraulics is sure to outlast even the longest boring. Pumps, gearing, sealing, etc should all be easily replaceable.
- dogma1138 6y agoThere have been plenty to cases where these things have broken down which caused years of delays and usually another tunnel had to be dug to get them free, sometimes they changed the path of the original tunnel to circumvent them where it was possible and more cost effective. These machines are constantly serviced and aren’t operated one minute past their life spans. I really don’t think you understand how many hours these things operate for.... To put things into perspective machines have a single digit meters per hours top speed and not high single digits to boot, and if you are digging in rock you are looking at sub meter per hour figures. If you have a source to contradict this I’ll be happy to read it but honestly every source from articles to documentaries pretty much paints the same picture these machines aren’t worth their weight in scrap once they are done with.