Bucket-wheel excavator in the context of Surface mining

Open-pit mining, also known as open-cast or open-cut mining and in larger contexts mega-mining, is a surface mining technique that extracts rock or minerals from the earth.

Open-pit mines are used when deposits of commercially useful ore or rocks are found near the surface where the overburden is relatively thin. In contrast, deeper mineral deposits can be reached using underground mining.

A bucket chain excavator (BCE) is a piece of heavy equipment used in surface mining and dredging. BCEs use buckets on a revolving chain to remove large quantities of material. They are similar to bucket-wheel excavators and trenchers. Bucket chain excavators remove material from below their plane of movement, which is useful if the pit floor is unstable or underwater.

Bagger 293, previously known as the MAN TAKRAF RB293, is a giant bucket-wheel excavator made by the German industrial company TAKRAF, formerly an East German Kombinat.

It owns and shares some records for terrestrial vehicle size in the Guinness Book of Records. Bagger 293 was built in 1999, one of a group of similar sized 'sibling' vehicles such as the Bagger 281 (built in 1958), Bagger 285 (1975), Bagger 287 (1976), Bagger 288 (1978), and Bagger 291 (1993). Moreover, like the Bagger 288, the Bagger 293 cost around 100 million US dollars at the time of its construction with exactly the same construction and assemblage time period of ten years.