Thursday, May 9, 2013

Keeping the Mining Industry Mining

By By Mal Crowley


Weekly inspection schedules an all heavy mining equipment is a vital element of mining engineering upkeep needs of important and pricey mining machinery.

The specific focus of these inspections is always on those key high stress parts and areas of the machines that have a history for stress and fatigue breaks.

Repairs and renovation of a stressed or smashed part are always less time consuming to finish the earlier the difficulty is detected.

Case in point:

A 390 ton Terex RH170 excavator on-site at a coal mine goes through is common weekly maintenance inspection and is found to possess an obvious stress fracture in the critical H-link. The machine is immediately taken off line. Each hour of down time is money lost for the mining company.

The engineering team are called out to the mine to evaluate the problem and get on with the business of getting the machine back on line as swiftly as practicable. The five man Mining Engineering Fast Reply Team have the cracked 2.4 ton H-link removed from the machine and a replacement fitted to the makers spec is 5 hours flat.

The machine is re-certified and back on line inside 6 hours of the team arriving on site. But that's the easy part. The Fractured 2.4ton H-Link is loaded and transported back to the workshop facility where the team do an in depth inspection on the fracture and confirm the best plan to fix and refurbish the H-link.

Backed by years of expertise the mining engineering team is well capable in what should be done to fix the cast and grade steel H-link. Although this 2.4 tonne part is large, the team have at their disposal a considerable range of heavy lift kit and all the obligatory tools to get the task finished quick effectively and safely.

A well established and step by step process of cleaning, grinding, pre-heating and air ark gouging lays bare the fractures and prepares them for the critical cross and mix 81NI Mig welding that will not only mend the breaks but will basically reinforce what are known to be weak or potential failure areas.

Engineering a world's best practice repair on this urgent piece of hardware requires both the talent and focus of the mining engineer and the compliance to a very technical process of preheating, gouging, run off plates, grinding and layering of the 81NI Mig welds.

The final result's a completely redecorated H-link that is absolutely corrected, cleaned, repainted, re-certified and returned to the mining company ready to be swapped out to another machine should the eventuality pop up.

The 24/7 engineering fast reply team members pride themselves on providing mining engineering services that get high worth mining machines back on line in the shortest amount of time, ensuring any down time and subsequent loss of earnings to the mine is keep to a minimum.

By Mal Crowley.




About the Author:





No comments :

Post a Comment