MINING HOISTS
custom solutions for even the most unique challenges. Whether it’ s special configurations for confined shaft spaces or high-load applications for ultra-deep mines, Becker delivers. All product groups have undergone destructive testing to prove product integrity, ensuring peace of mind in the most demanding environments.”
Becker’ s world-class production facilities, combined with design expertise, it says ensure that each attachment meets exacting standards.“ Moreover, our association with verope Mining enhances our design capabilities based on both Becker and verope Mining’ s experience, ensuring that attachment designs are perfectly matched to the characteristics of the ropes used, optimising safety, longevity, and performance.”
Becker says every rope attachment comes with full traceability, from raw material procurement through to manufacturing, testing, functionality and ongoing maintenance requirements. This meticulous record-keeping ensures that every component meets specifications, provides peace of mind during audits or inspections, and facilitates streamlined maintenance and replacement programs.
It has supplied the rope attachments for the longest single wind in operation as well as the longest rope stretch compensation on a Blair Multi-Rope winder, showcasing its ability to deliver innovative solutions for complex winding systems. The largest friction winder in the world uses Becker rope attachments exclusively, reinforcing it says its status as the trusted partner for highperformance hoisting operations.
All product groups have undergone destructive testing to prove product integrity, reinforcing a reputation for delivering safe, reliable, and field-proven components.
Mining ropes in parallel
Austria-headquartered Teufelberger-Redaelli has spent the last decade or so developing and refining one the 7Mine and 8Mine, two of the most high performing mining ropes available in the world today but at the same time capable of replacing existing ropes with the minimum of headaches. IM Editorial Director Paul Moore spoke at length with Harald Schoisswohl, its Head of Business Unit Mining.
Schoisswohl:“ This is a really important point in our mining rope journey as we have recently successfully completed a major 7Mine study. With all of our ropes in the field, we have a continuous learning program in place through which we closely track their performance. For this study, 7Mine was running for 30 months at a gold mine in South Africa. We actually supplied the first set of 7Mine ropes to this mine back in 2014 with installation on a dual purpose winder which handles both ore and personnel. These ropes operated until 2017 and had replaced a triangular strand rope. While they were a great success at the time we were not tracking the performance data in detail. We had the opportunity to supply 7Mine ropes again more recently, and this time we did put in place a system to allow us to track them very closely.”
He adds that there are a number of reasons why this project has been critical for Teufelberger-Redaelli’ s global mining business – the first point being it is the deepest double drum hoist in the world.“ The ropes we supplied have a 54 mm diameter and are 2.7 km in length of which the suspended rope length is 2.4 km. So you are going from surface to 2.4 km with two ropes, one each side. All the other deep shaft hoists in the world of this depth or deeper involve a Blair multirope hoist with four ropes, two for each side. That can go to 3 km – and in fact the deepest Blair is operating to 3.1 km at the same mine just next to where our 7Mine is running. No-one expected the 7Mine to outperform the triangular strand, but it did, over its operating period from July 2022 to December 2024. That was significantly better than the best performing triangular strand rope life they had on the same winder.”
The difference was about 30 % based on the best performing triangular strand rope and between 50-60 % based on the average rope service life of the previously used triangular strand ropes. This is important as it is a significant operation to change out such heavy ropes – they are 35 t or so each and so it is hard to manipulate them and of course it comes with risks. In addition, the customer was able to apply the same maintenance system as they did with triangular strand ropes.
The 7Mine has seven outer strands and the 8Mine, also from Teufelberger-Redaelli, has eight.“ They were specifically designed for mining, unlike other ropes in the industry that were mainly designed initially for other markets like cranes or offshore. We set out to develop a higher performance rope for the mining industry based on compacted, parallel lay round strand technology. Both the 7Mine and 8Mine have a compound core made out of steel and synthetic strands with the synthetic strands are not load bearing elements. All the breaking strength is coming from the steel strands. We set out to match the weight of the triangular strand rope as well as the breaking force as a pre-requisite because we had to be able to replace these in service. Existing hoists have a given rope diameter and can only work with a certain rope weight.”
So what are the main 7Mine benefits?“ Number one is that overall you get a significantly longer rope life. But it also comes with increased ease of handling and safety during installation and rope maintenance. In South Africa, mines have to carry out front end cuts of mining ropes regularly – this is so that short sections can be sent to CSIR for testing to see if it still meets required breaking force. For this you have to bank your skip or cage at collar level and then detach the rope from the skip – the issue here is that mine ropes build up huge amount of contained torque energy because of load differences between the bottom and top section of the rope. When you detach the rope from the skip and release the rope that energy comes out of the rope which can be dangerous. This energy is problematic also for rope life and even load distribution during use. Also if you have a slack rope condition during operation, there is a high risk that the rope will kink due to this stored energy which means typically immediate rope removal.”
Compacted, parallel lay round strand ropes like the 7Mine and 8Mine do not build up the same torque as triangular strand ropes – over 90 % less. So the rope is much easier and safer to handle. The triangular strand rope typically already builds up torque even when you run it through the first deflection sheave – compacted parallel lay round strand ropes do not do this. With the parallel lay round strand rope, all the wires within a strand have the same lay length and are therefore parallel to each other so have line contact. This has the advantage of no wire nicking within a strand and it improves the fatigue life of a rope significantly.
Triangular strand ropes on the other hand are made of cross-lay strands where the wires of the strand crossover each other( point to point contact – this leads to internal wire nicking and reduces the ropes fatigue life).
The 8Mine rope has also been proven in the industry – it is running for example at Hecla Mining’ s Lucky Friday silver-lead-zinc mineshaft in Idaho, USA. The suspended rope length is about 1.9 km.“ They switched from triangular strand ropes to our technology almost a decade ago and are still working closely with us. They have replaced them three times since the start and each time we have improved the rope lifetime by further customising the rope for the given environment in a continuous improvement program.”
Also this mine benefits from a longer rope service life and the significantly reduced toque build up in operation which increases not only the productivity of the mine but also makes the handling of the rope much easier and safer for their maintenance team.
Whether the 8Mine with its eight outer strands or the 7Mine with its seven outer strands will be used for a given system, is something we decide together with the mine based on a thorough technical analyses.
34 International Mining | AUGUST 2025