This amazing machine is a Komatsu WE2350 wheel loader, a 270-ton, 2,300bhp leviathan designed to load the world’s ‘ultra class’ 400-ton mining dump trucks.
Originally a LeTourneau design launched in 2000, the WE2350 remains the world’s largest wheel loader, and – somewhat appropriately – rides upon the largest tyres ever produced. Which is a bit of a problem if you’re trying to build the WE2350 out of LEGO.
Cue Flickr’s Beat Felber, who – over the past week of so – has uploaded an entire mine’s worth of equipment in 1:28 scale.
His incredible recreation of the Komatsu WE2350 is the latest in his series, and rides upon brick-built wheels measuring a huge eighteen studs in diameter, each centred on a twenty-two-sided cylinder wrapped in Technic rubber lift-arm connectors.
Each if those remarkable wheels is powered, with two XL Motors driving the axles, an M Motor the articulated steering, whilst another XL and M Motor operate the mammoth loading arm and bucket, the real version of which can lift 41 cubic meters of material.
It’s all remotely operable thanks to two third-party SBricks, plus there’s working head and tail-lights, an oscillating rear axle, deployable ladders and stairs, plus opening doors and hatches.
It’s a spectacular piece of Technic engineering, and you can see more of Beat’s Komatsu WE2350, and the other amazing mining machines that accompany it, on Flickr. Click the link above to take a closer look.