HEAVY ENGINEERING
1,000 m² workshop space, including 20 t main
cranage capacity and a 5 t auxiliary crane. The
workshop is fully fitted with machine tools and
equipment necessary to carry out a wide range of
gearbox repairs.
“Located in Arequipa at the heart of Peru’s
copper mining industry, our new service centre is
close to our key customers, enabling us to deliver
rapid gearbox service, repair and upgrade for all
mining applications including conveyors and mills.”
Crawler shoes
Crawler shoes of large mining shovels are usually
made of cast steels, which can be low alloy steel
heat treated to have high mechanical properties
or high manganese steel. In hard rock mines,
isolated failure of single track shoes is a big
concern. The cost of repetitive downtimes to
replace single pieces is much higher than the
price of the track shoe itself (see photo).
Industeel, a wholly-owned division of
ArcelorMittal, with technological production
facilities in France and Belgium, has recently
developed an alternative concept to overcome
cracking issues often observed on cast pieces.
Guy Baron, Product Manager for Tool and Die
Steels explains: “Industeel’s crawler shoes are
100% machined from forged quenched and
tempered steel blocks made of proprietary
Mecasteel 145 grade. M145 is a 3.5 % Ni steel
providing high tensile strength superior to 1,100
MPa (160 ksi) and homogeneous properties
throughout the whole thickness (15 in), combined
with a very good toughness greater than 20J at -
40°C, and a perfect soundness. Forged parts have
a better internal metallurgical quality than
castings, just because of the hot reduction ratio
applied to forgings, and all our forged blocks are
100% UT controlled.”
Full scale testing in a large iron ore mine in
The cost of downtime for replacing an isolated
failed pad is much higher than the price of the
track shoe itself
Canada has demonstrated that two Bucyrus 495
HD shovels mounted with a pair of Industeel’s
forged crawler shoes have worked more than
5,000 and 6,000 hours respectively, without
recording a single failure, including during the
Grease Transfer Coupling
Easy, safe and fast
Meet the Banlaw GTX
visit banlaw.com
Fluid Transfer Couplings • Mine Spec Refuelling • Overfill Protection • Fuel Management Systems