MAINTENANCE
company’ s H6000 tertiary cone crusher for tests.“ Just looking at it, we can see a significant difference in the oil,” says Product Manager Magnus Andersson.“ We haven ' t yet had the results from the oil test we submitted, but we ' re convinced they are going to show what we already think we know.” He says that opening the crusher is enough to notice the benefits.“ It ' s much cleaner than before, with less dirt that wears down the machine. The oil temperature is also lower and more even, because the coolers are not clogged with dirt. In the long term, the operating costs are going to fall significantly.”
The result meant that Ramnaslätt installed the filter on two more crushers. The benefits are being seen at Skanska too, in Önnestad near Kristianstad, where five years ago a filter was installed on a Sandvik CH440 with 400 litres of oil in the tank.“ We haven ' t changed the oil since then,” says Richard Svensson,“ And we haven ' t changed the filter inside the machine either. Changing the offline filter every year has been sufficient.” He also confirms that the crusher is cleaner inside since the installation.“ The lubrication oil doesn ' t get as warm as it used to, and there ' s no water in the oil, which can cause problems with condensation when it ' s cold outside.” Svensson continues:“ The investment cost has definitely been covered. And I ' m convinced that the wear and tear on the machine has fallen significantly.”
“ At Sandvik, we ' ve chosen to invest in a solution that is well-established in the offshore and wind industries,” concludes Andreas Christoffersson,“ It ' s an extremely fine filtering technology that filters out water and oxidation residues as well as particles. There are, of course, many offline solutions on the market, but I recommend everyone, whatever brand you use, to take a closer look at this technology.”
Conveyor maintenance
REMA TIP TOP, the globally operating system provider of services and products in the field of conveying and treatment technology as well as tyre repair, this year acquired Norte Sul Serviços de Vulcanização, a conveyor maintenance provider in Brazil. Through the acquisition, REMA TIP TOP increased its global footprint and is now present in Brazil with a wholly-owned subsidiary.
“ The acquisition complements our service focus very well”, says Thorsten Wach, CEO of REMA TIP TOP.“ The takeover strengthens our position as a full solutions provider. It extends our global service team, while it also marks an important step in our expansion strategy in growth markets. It ensures a nation-wide coverage in Brazil with service and stocking locations in Sao Paulo, Canaã dos Carajás, Nova Lima, Vitoria and Belo Horizonte.”
REMA TIP TOP is an established global system
provider with an integrated and closely interlocked services and product portfolio. The company continuously expands its network through acquisitions, further strengthening its global service offering. In 2016, these included the French COBRA, the German Gulich, the Australian ConvaTech and the Norwegian Flexpro.“ With a strong team of service technicians, engineers and specialists around the world, REMA TIP TOP offers customer oriented services on six continents. The service teams focus on improving system availability by increasing operational readiness and prolonged system lifetime. These goals are ideally aligned with those of Norte Sul Serviços as a sophisticated conveyor maintenance business in Brazil. The joint organisation will be particularly well positioned to meet the rising expectations of its customers.
REMA TIP TOP will provide the new Brazilian subsidiary with financial, project management, engineering, product and service resources. The local project team will be supported by the REMA TIP TOP global response team of experienced engineers from the service competence centres in Germany, the rest of Europe, South Africa, Australia, Chile and Brazil. Via Norte Sul Serviços, REMA TIP TOP will also introduce its service processes and technologies to the Brazilian market, including the innovative REMA M ³ remote monitoring system.
Rafael Mashiba, Managing Director of Norte Sul Serviços, says:“ The new partnership offers Norte Sul Serviços access to a broad network of experts as well as global resources, technologies and financial strength of the REMA TIP TOP group, allowing us to provide our customers in Brazil with even better and more professional services.” Norte Sul Serviços employs approximately 220 people, comprising a service force with 180 technicians, 20 engineers and 20 administrative employees.
Conveyors are the arteries of a bulk material handling facility. High levels of availability are a prerequisite for the smooth running of an operation, while downtime will have a disproportionally disruptive effect. Gary Ryan, Design Engineer at BMT WBM, a subsidiary of BMT Group, states:“ Ideally, a conveyor should be designed so that it does not require maintenance. However, in practice, for conveyors built to a price, regular maintenance is required while in service. The challenge for a conveyor designer is to minimise the total life cycle cost of the conveyor, balancing capital and all maintenance costs. A conveyor designed to operate with minimal planned maintenance will have greater availability – ensuring that the physical design allows the maintenance to be undertaken quickly and easily – so will increase availability further still. Furthermore, ensuring that the design allows easy access for
maintenance will also increase the chances of the work being done at the correct intervals making the conveyor more reliable. Every conveyor designer also needs to understand the priorities and the operating and maintenance practices of the site where a conveyor is to be used, so that their design is appropriate to the site.”
He argues that one way to reduce conveyor maintenance costs is to keep the design as simple as possible with additional components only added if there is justification. The simplest conveyor design would therefore have just two pulleys and a single drive.“ If the belt strength and cost becomes a concern, then multiple drives can be justified. If a shuttle head is required then more pulleys are justified. The BMT WBM team often examine conveyors where excessive numbers of pulleys have been used without any rational justification. Additional components that do not add to the conveyors operational capability are simply mechanisms waiting to fail and cause unnecessary downtime.”
Conveyors can also be made complicated with items that are secondary to the basic conveyor function. For example, BMT reports that the three Latrobe Valley mines in Victoria, Australia have gradually been eliminating turnovers and spill belts installed in existing conveyors. The justification is that the turnovers and spill belts require skilled maintenance in the mine, and increase the maintenance time for the whole conveyor. By comparison a piece of mobile plant used for clean-up is maintained off site and is readily replaceable.
On sites with multiple conveyors, further maintenance savings can be achieved by ensuring the conveyor designs maximise the standardisation of components and work procedures. As an example of component standardisation, conveyors at Loy Yang mine in Victoria, Australia have one drive pulley design and one driven pulley design in use throughout their 2,000 mm wide movable conveyors. The manufacturing details of the pulley shells have changed over the years, but the respective pulleys shells, shafts and bearings all remain interchangeable. The benefits of standardisation of components include the reduced spares costs and greater flexibility in allocating the available spares.
As bulk handling equipment suppliers continue to make use of new and evolving technologies to develop“ smarter” conveyor systems, Martin Engineering has introduced data tracking with QR codes on its belt cleaners and other components. Customers benefit from regularly-scheduled inspections by factorytrained and MSHA-certified technicians, providing operators with easy access to a wealth of data on the application, operating environment, service life and condition of conveyor components,
62 International Mining | JANUARY 2018