MINING TYRES
By building a strong product lineup and expanding its production and supply capacity in all OHT categories, including OTR tyres, Yokohama Rubber says it aims to strengthen the market position and competitiveness of its OHT business and increase its overall corporate value.
Monaflex and the value of repair data
UK-based mining tyre repair system specialist Monaflex says that data is at the heart of any effective tyre maintenance programme.“ Accurate and comprehensive records mean that site and repair variables can be analysed alongside injury and repair life data. Using this data, trends can be monitored and relationships established. Repair life data also helps quantify the very real economic and sustainability benefits of an effective repair programme.”
The new Monaflex M100 data logging add-on is designed to streamline the integration of repair data into wider records. making it easier than ever to build the picture that drives better decisions. Adding data logging capability to Monaflex tyre repair systems provides complete repair traceability and transparency.
Monaflex hot vulcanisation it argues results in a repaired tyre which is structurally closest to the original tyre.“ Stronger, more durable repairs, will provide the best ROI on the repair programme.” Monaflex systems use simultaneous heat and pressure delivered by flexible, durable components to provide smooth, distortion free repairs which are evenly cured.“ Results are consistent, the components themselves are durable and long lasting and the repairs last the distance.”
Quality is equally important in hand tooling and consumables. Monaflex also offers a selection of tried and tested options to ensure consistent results and sound value. Finally, it points out that a properly trained team is the heart of a sound maintenance programme:“ Tyre repair techniques, astute tyre repair management, safe work procedures and equipment care and maintenance are knowledge requirements for all involved in tyre maintenance. Maximising repair life means pairing the right tools with a highly skilled team. At Monaflex, we believe in working hand in hand with our customers for the long term to support the team optimise their maintenance programme. Our customer support is a core priority, ensuring all operations achieve optimum results time and time again.” customers’ road graders we place a device where the operator can pick the job, accept it and action; then once done, over time we can build a nice data set on how much time we need to spend to fix those issues that we have communicated. Long term we want to create a model that lets us understand better the costs we need to put into remediation of road constraints; plus what’ s the payback in terms of tyre life or productivity or fuel consumption so that the miner can make an educated decision to say, for example, for now I am accepting the type undulations in this area because it will cost me more to fix them than I get back. This is the type of data model that you get with the whole site integration, because we are combining the tyre and truck performance data with what we’ re measuring on the road.
Q Are there other future upsides that you think HaulSight can bring?
One area of potential I am very excited about is the development of a tyre energy model. When you look at the interactions that the tyre has on a mine site, the majority of them you can express as energy- the undulations that the tyre is exposed to, that G-force is an energy – also if the tyre has a collision with a rock. And the TKPH can also be expressed in energy terms. So we think we can start to collect how much of those energy events went into the tyre and how much energy the tyre can sustain before it fails. And then that allows us to look at tyre performance maybe a little differently than we did in the past by saying this operation, for example, has 15 undulations per kilometre, or this operation has 15 collisions or shocks or impacts per kilometre of operation. And the energy generated out of that is equal to X. And because of that, your tyre life is X. And if you were to remove some of those energy generating events, you could prolong your tyre performance by a defined amount with a corresponding productivity increase. So that’ s really where we want to get to. But to do this, we have to get more systems onboard and track everything that the tyres encounter.
Q Kal Tire developed TOMS while TireSight uses Pitcrew AI pit technology, and Decoda sensors are used in HaulSight. How do all these systems work together from a software interoperability ecosystem point of view?
I would describe the“ secret sauce” as the data model that we created which takes all of the information from all the systems that we are operating including HaulSight, TireSight and TOMS plus inspections from technicians in the field, but also data from TPMS. All of that is mapped for each site, and it lands in our data lake, where we are then able to utilise that information for different purposes. For example, one other request we have had which is on our roadmap is if a TPMS detects a rapid deflation, can you look on the map and figure out any HaulSight events that are close to the GPS location of the rapid deflation to determine what object caused it and then go and remediate that source. Equally if TireSight detects higher temperatures in the tyre, but TPMS says the pressure is still okay then the heat source is external and is from a seal separation or from some other friction source and the tyre has to be removed. If it was something caused from the inside, you could do pressure adjustments or change the behaviour of the truck in terms of speed or the whole cycle, and the tyre could continue to operate. We’ re trying to build a kind of data glass table that allows us to overlay all of the information that we collect on the mine site and then look at them holistically and not just in silos to make better predictions and better recommendations for the customer.
Q You said there were whole site systems running already. Can you sort of give some general comment on that and for the sites with HaulSight operating, are they in general operating TireSight as well? What work is there still to do?
We have a few sites that do already have a TireSight system and they’ re interested to look at the addition of HaulSight. But we also have customers that signed up for a trial with HaulSight where there was no TireSight system present. We have also mounted the first time a HaulSight system on an autonomous truck where we worked with the OEM and the mining customer to make sure that both systems can coexist on the machine without interfering each other. We also have a lot of interest in Australia from mediumsized mining companies with smaller fleets of trucks and smaller payload trucks – not large fleets of ultra-class machines, not as big as the oil stand operators, for example. So it is interesting that they also see the value of the system. On work to do, we’ re still making some modifications on the hardware, making some improvements, plus as I said we have moved from regular cameras to self-cleaning cameras. We’ re also making changes to the brackets to make sure that we have the right positioning on the trucks and making tweaks here and there, such as changing cable connections to make things more robust. Overall, we have over 15 HaulSight systems running in a number of countries, and at different stages of implementation.
International Mining | JULY 2026 43