Reclaimer

This article is about the reclaimer machine. For information on the term Reclaimer as used in Halo: Combat Evolved please see Reclaimer (Halo).

A reclaimer is a very large machine used in Bulk material handling applications. A reclaimer's function is to recover bulk material such as ores and cereals from a stockpile. A stacker is used to stack the material.

Reclaimers are rated in tph (tonnes per hour) for capacity and normally travel on a rail between stockpiles in the stockyard. A reclaimer can move in three directions typically - horizontally along the rail - vertically by "luffing" its boom and rotationally by slewing its boom. Reclaimers are generally electrically powered by means of a trailing cable.

Stackers and Reclaimers were originally manually-controlled manned machines with no remote control - typically today they are fully automated with their parameters (for stacking or reclaiming) remotely set; however, some older reclaimers may still be manually controlled as reclaiming is far more difficult to automate than stacking - the reason for this being the detection of pile edges has been difficult to automate in different environmental conditions with differing bulk materials.

Reclaimer generally use "bucket wheels" for removing material from the pile they are reclaiming.