DRIVES & CONTROLS
DB Santasalo recently installed Western Australia ’ s first GearWatch monitoring system
unit , which would provide continuous monitoring of their oil ’ s health and early detection of wear through oil particle counting . Our Field Service team then travelled to their mine site to support the installation of the system to their 8- kilometre-long overland conveyor .”
The installation was carried out in collaboration with the customer ’ s contractor team , with technical support supplied by a DB Santasalo Senior Condition Monitoring Specialist in Finland . The GearWatch system is now fully operational and going forward the customer will communicate directly with DB Santasalo engineers in Finland for any support they require . They will also have full autonomy to customise
the system parameters to their own requirements .
The advanced and specialist GearWatch system is designed to continuously monitor the oil . It provides clear information and trends on the wear process , to detect early-stage damage of the gears and bearings . The customer can access their information 24 / 7 at the click of a mouse , directly from the GearWatch customer portal . GearWatch measures , records and analyses data , reporting any changes in measured parameters in real time , via the internet .
Oil particle content monitoring enables early detection of potential gear unit failures months , or even a year in advance . This allows you to plan maintenance activities around your operational requirements and reduce downtime .
Its latest innovation , GearWatch Vibration Easy , is a new way to implement condition monitoring of process-critical gears and other rotating machines in an automated , easy and inexpensive way . “ GearWatch can be tailored to your operating parameters and all data is monitored by gearbox experts at our control centre . Not only does it measure changes within the gearbox , it can also monitor a full range of equipment including motors , hydraulic systems and bearings , as required .”
Driving surface miners
An innovative but perhaps not well known application of drives in mining is their use on surface mining machines . Vermeer ’ s direct drive Terrain Levelers employ the Hägglunds Quantum hydraulic drive solution . Quantum motors offer high torque at high efficiency – making them fit for use on mobile machinery , such as construction or mining equipment , or in stationary processing facilities . Installation is simple , and the motor ’ s compact design allows it to fit in places where a high-torque electric motor would not . Hägglunds Quantum delivers up to 3 MW of power . The Quantum range consists of two motors - Quantum and Quantum Power . They have been deployed on the Vermeer T1255 Direct Drive Surface Miner , Vermer T1255III Terrain Leveler SEM direct drive as well as the large T1655 Direct Drive Surface Miner which uses two Quantum 840 motors while the T1255 uses a single Quantum 840 motor . These machines are used widely in mining , including Australian iron ore , bauxite in Guinea , Chilean caliche mining as well as other applications . Jeff Harlow at Hägglunds told IM that the Hägglunds motors provide better efficiency than chain drives which translates to better power utilisation and very long motor life . The Hägglunds motors are also smaller which allows for a more compact installation – the motors are mounted inside the cutter drum . Hägglunds is a brand of
Hägglunds Quantum motors are widely used on Vermeer ' s Rexroth . powerful direct drive Terrain Leveler surface miners , such as this T1655
Flender One for high performance mining pumps
For slurry pump gearboxes , two things are critical : meeting the exact speed requirement and dissipating the heat generated during operation . Flender One is the completely redesigned version of the single-stage helical gearbox from drive technology specialist Flender . The company told IM : “ It is the global benchmark in many industries and applications including mining business . Slurry pumps belong to the first applications where Flender One reveals its new features . The new gearbox reduces end users ' operating expenditures and saves valuable resources , due to a unique housing design and a gear set calculated according to the latest Flender methods . In addition , designers benefit from a quick and smart configuration that greatly simplifies the selection process .”
The award-winning Flender One product design features a 35 % increase in housing surface area . Its cooling ribs significantly increase thermal capacity and in many cases eliminate the need for additional , external cooling of the gearbox . This not only saves investment and service costs , but also valuable energy . The optimised Metaperform ® gear set also reduces power loss by up to 50 % compared with previous gear unit solutions . This makes operating more efficient and the return on invest is reached very quick .
Flender has succeeded in developing the world ' s narrowest gear ratio range with 103 stages between 1 and 7.1 per size . This allows the speed to be set almost ideally for maximum efficiency - a key benefit in mining applications . This speedfit means a maximum deviation of 1.5 % between the desired speed and the available speed . “ We want to make the world more sustainable together with our customers and partners . With Flender One , our customers get a completely new type of gearbox solution , custom-fit for their application and exactly according to their requirements - with the smallest possible drive concept and thus without waste . The reduced energy requirement during operation also helps to save resources ,” says Andreas Evertz , CEO of the Flender Group .
It says the uniqueness of Flender One also lies in the digital services throughout the entire life cycle - from ordering to operation in the plant . Flender ' s new gearbox intelligence AIQ ® is installed as standard in the Flender One for the first time . “ Thanks to integrated sensor technology and extensive analysis functions , it provides plant operators with valuable information about the gearbox and process during operation via an app or in the portal . In this way , operating conditions that could have a damaging effect can be detected and failures
36 International Mining | NOVEMBER / DECEMBER 2023