HIGH PROFILE
A new era of smart trays
Truck bodies have a potential place in helping mines achieve major efficiency improvements – by acting as an OEM-agnostic host and conduit for sensors and real time data . Duratray International is leading the way with NEXUS MINE and Paul Moore found out more
On November 2 , Duratray at IMARC in Sydney , Australia , will officially launch its NEXUS MINE system – previously referred to as SmartTray 4.0 . The offering is described as both OEM agnostic and highly secure – giving mining customers real time data that is tailored to their company preferences and individual site needs , and without having to go through any non open source embedded OEM system on the truck . It is also network agnostic , using Duratray ’ s own wireless modem that can connect directly via a public or private cellular network to its cloudbased platform . IM spoke to Duratray International MD Marcelo Medel for more information .
Q Can you give some insight into how the SmartTray 4.0 project came about ? A This is something that has grown out of multiple requests from our customers , dating back over the past three years or so . Many mining companies struggle to get the information they want from the OEMs in real time . Plus , as they almost always have mixed fleets , they are not able to access one unified system , but have to work with two or sometimes more OEM systems as they are not open source . They said to us – you are an integral part of the truck as well – why can ’ t we get data from the tray ? We accepted the challenge and created a computer device that is connected to our online cloud platform ; using front end software that enables mining customers to view in real time all of the variables they want to see , across as many different OEM branded machines as they wish . And they can use the
Marcelo Medel , Duratray International Managing Director
NEXUS MINE will allow operations to monitor their fleets from anywhere in the world . ( Photo courtesy of De Beers Group )
system even if they don ’ t have Duratray bodies . Then we asked , what variables did they want to have ? And the response was an interesting mix – in fact every single customer gave a different answer . One of the top global miners wanted live vision – cameras showing if the truck load is centred or off balance , as if it is the latter , then it can cause over-wear of some of the tyres . Another major miner wanted live cameras too , but with a different aim – to allow them to flag up any uncrushable metal being dumped in the tray that could otherwise end up in the crusher , which could be a bucket tooth or even part of a steel tray liner . Yet another company wanted to see operator performance and cycle time – time taken from loader to dump and back to loader for example – to allow ranking and then identification of best practices to help step up production through retraining . There is also a desire to know truck availability , ie how much time in a month or even a year is the truck in maintenance . You can also see where are the trucks and how many times they go for refuelling – often some operators take the trucks for refuelling more frequently than others , just out of personal preference , which greatly reduces efficiency . Still another request was safety related – by installing wear sensors to avoid having anyone climbing onto the tray measuring plate thickness . On our Duratray bodies for example , we developed our
38 International Mining | OCTOBER 2022