27 minute read
MAINTENANCE
THEJO SHUTS DOWN COSTS
THEJO ENGINEERING (AUSTRALIA) RECOGNISES THE IMPACT A SHUTDOWN CAN HAVE ON OPERATIONS AND PROFITABILITY OF PLANTS. PLANNED OR UNPLANNED, THE COST IS ASTRONOMICAL. THEJO HAS THE MOST RELIABLE AND EFFICIENT PROCESSES IN PLACE TO REDUCE THE NEED FOR SHUTDOWNS.
Thejo offers a full-service capability, ranging from spares to basic modifications of a plant, to a full redesign of various pieces of equipment.
The company’s product focus is on wear protection systems, transfer point solutions, grinding mills and trommels, screening plants, and filtration.
In all parts of mineral processing, there’s abrasion and wear as the material in a slurry form moves around the circuit.
Even small improvements in slurry handling efficiency can have a drastic impact on mining profitability, on equipment such as chutes and launders, grinding mills, cyclones, screens and trommels.
“At Thejo, our focus is on maintenance and serviceability. Our entire focus is to improve efficiency, to improve wear life and to reduce downtime,” Thejo Engineering (Australia) president Graeme Kibell said.
“Downtime is the enormous cost driver in the mineral processing plant, and if one can improve the uptime, and reduce the number of shutdowns or the time it takes to do these necessary change-outs, that would be invaluable to the customer.”
All the products that Thejo makes for the beneficiation and grinding circuit are designed to protect the assets assembled with sacrificial liners.
The mill itself is lined internally with sacrificial liners and trommels assembled with screening media inside it. They are designed to resist the continued wear-and-tear action of the materials processed, as it goes about segregation of sizes.
“In a very aggressive environment, some of these products might have to be changed out on a six-monthly basis, and some of them, in a less arduous situation, could go a year or two before they need to be replaced,” Kibell said.
Thejo Engineering (Australia) is a branch of Thejo India and offers solutions for the mining, mineral processing and corrosion protection segments of the industry.
Headquartered at Bibra Lake in Perth, manned with technical and sales experts, and a warehouse carrying a wide variety of inventory, the company’s focus is on the growing demands of specialised custom solutions for its clients across Australia.
“We’re a solution-providing organisation that aids customers in product selection, installation and product monitoring. We feed the information we receive from the customer back to the designers and the engineers at our head office in India to work on improvement of the designs,” Kibell said.
Thejo India operations has design engineers and specialists working on various engineering simulation software programs with the ability to design and make improvements.
“Every effort is made to reduce unplanned shutdowns, so product integrity and product reliability are absolutely critical there. We certainly don’t want unplanned shutdowns,” Kibell said.
“If we do have to have a planned shutdown, then we want to minimise the effect of it with systems that are easily and safely replaceable. Safety is a huge concern, so we’re looking for products that can be easily and safely handled. Any hours that can be saved in a shutdown translate straight back to savings to the customer.”
The trommel with screen panels, dams and spirals are critical elements that Thejo has focused on for improvements.
“It is not just the wear life, but also efficiency in terms of how effectively the trommel screens can segregate between the oversized material and the size that you actually require,” Thejo Engineering managing director Manoj Joseph Kallarackal said.
“None of the mines would appreciate even an hour of unplanned shutdown because that translates into millions of dollars and that’s where we add value to our clients.”
Thejo is also focused on reducing the number of planned shutdowns a mine may need. This is a highly customised process, as each site has its own shutdown schedules.
The length of the shutdown periods varies from site to site, so to offer extended time between shutdowns, Thejo has to alter designs as per each site.
“You have to look at what’s best suited for that customer so you can get a longer life on the products,” Thejo Engineering (Australia) head of regional sales David Wheelhouse said.
“If we don’t customise our process for each customer, it won’t help in the long run. For example, if a customer is on a 12-week shutdown cycle then extending life to, say, 15 weeks may not be beneficial at all. Our objective is to try and get at least 24 weeks’ life in order to skip a complete shutdown.”
One of Thejo’s major customers in the Goldfields-Esperance region in Western Australia recently went through a reorganisation of its shutdown periods.
The mine was having a shutdown
THEJO ENGINEERING (AUSTRALIA) IS A BRANCH OF THEJO INDIA.
every 15 weeks, with the second shutdown mainly for the changeover of trommel panels.
Thejo designed a screen panel that lasted 35 weeks, so now the company could eliminate the second shutdown, which saved a 40-hour period of production stoppage.
“We eliminated that stress for them, so they don’t have to shut down and now they’ve moved it out to be one to two shutdowns per year in that sort of circuit,” Wheelhouse told Australian Mining.
“That’s what we want to try and to achieve with any customer, to get the best part for their plant and time frame to reduce those costs. If you can eliminate a shutdown, that goes a long way to save them a lot of money.
“An unplanned shutdown could cost a minimum of $100,000 per hour and could be up to $500,000 per hour. If that shutdown goes for 24 hours, do the math – that’s a high cost.”
Thejo’s engineers visit the customer sites and collect data through observation in the plant. The engineers report these data back in terms of what is required for the client to get superior performance out of the product.
“There are frequent process changes in the plant operations, which are periodically monitored and studied by our engineers,” Kallarackal said. “Based on these data we make alterations to the design of the screens, if necessary, to maintain the required optimum output desired by the clients.
“It’s a constant cycle of taking feedback from the site, then passing it on to the technical and design team in order to come out with a product which will be most suitable for the client.”
Thejo has an extensive research and development (R&D) department that has diverse product ranges that can withstand some of the harshest working conditions in leading mines, all with an unwavering focus on quality and commitment.
“We constantly receive varied needs from the mines and industry, making us continually innovate and improve the product line,” Thejo Engineering product division head Jomon Mathew said.
“Whenever such requirements arise, we consider it a product development. It could be in terms of a process change, or it could be through an engineering design change. Either way it is pointed towards our R&D team to be addressed.”
Thejo aims to relieve the stress and tension for its customers by understanding the process, and by understanding what the customer wants and how to get there.
“We spend time understanding the process and trying to improve the product, but there’s also the relationship we have with the customer, and we spend a lot of time understanding them and making it easier for them,” Kibell said. AM
UPTAKE’S ASSET STRATEGY LIBRARY IS THE LARGEST OF ITS KIND.
DEFEATING DOWNTIME FROM ALL ANGLES
WITH THE WORLD’S MOST COMPREHENSIVE KNOWLEDGE BASE OF INDUSTRIAL ASSET CONTENT, UPTAKE CONQUERS DOWNTIME WITH PRECISION AND ACCURACY, IMPROVING ANTICIPATION AND PREVENTIVE MAINTENANCE.
In a sector known for its expensive machinery and high expectations regarding productivity, mining companies must put preventive maintenance processes in place to ensure breakdowns are minimised and downtime is reduced. Millions of dollars are riding on it.
Modern mining companies seek to create value through optimising their operations, managing risk and improving the business intelligence of their operations and maintenance organisation. Leaders do that through leveraging data-driven insights and content.
Armed with the world’s most comprehensive knowledge base of industrial asset content, industrial intelligence software company Uptake is helping mining companies see around corners and spot opportunities that impact medium- and long-term decisions.
Uptake’s Asset Strategy Library has more than 58,000 failure modes for over 800 asset types, with about 5000 preventive maintenance tasks to mitigate those failures.
Through this database, Uptake has more equipment strategies to prevent problems than any other assetmanagement software provider.
Uptake Asia-Pacific vice president Tom Fisher says the Asset Strategy Library’s sheer breadth means mining companies are always one step ahead.
“For asset health experts and reliability engineers, they can understand at any given time the best strategies they should put in place to prevent failures from ever occurring,” he said.
“Then if a failure is about to occur – because our predictive applications tell them that – we give them the recommended actions they should take in order to mitigate that failure.”
Uptake integrated the Asset Strategy Library into its product portfolio as part of its acquisition of US-based Asset Performance Technologies in 2018.
Combining the Asset Strategy Library with Uptake’s Industrial AI and Internet of Things (IoT) products, the company solidified its standing with asset performance management and advanced industrial analytics products.
While Uptake has the exclusive licence over the world’s most comprehensive library of assetfailure data, the company doesn’t overcomplicate its offering. Uptake prides itself on providing products that can be commissioned quickly and efficiently.
“We see a lot of companies, particularly in the Australian marketplace, they come in and they sit down and it’s months or sometimes years to get the end result of a piece of consulting work,” Fisher says.
“One of our applications can be delivering value within a couple of days, and some, depending on the complexity, can be up and running within a few weeks.
“Then you have access to data that’s generally locked up in a whole bunch of systems at the organisation and our role is to give that in a single pane of glass so employees are able to make better-informed and faster datadriven decisions.”
It’s precise but also simplified, and it’s not only saving mining companies spending millions on mopping up the machinery mess, but also ensuring companies enjoy the economic benefit of increased operational uptime.
One Uptake client is a miner operating in the Pilbara region of Western Australia, who engaged the company about shoring up its rail infrastructure. Fisher says Uptake was able to deliver a specific product that anticipated the imminence of a fault in stages.
“Where we can really claim our pit-to-port coverage is an Australian case from the Pilbara. Here what we’re doing is analysing faults on ore railcars, specifically wheels and bearings,” Fisher said.
“When a fault is manifesting over time, it impacts the integrity of the asset and can lead to early failure. But it can also be a real safety concern because faults in wheels, cracked bearings, or brake failures can lead to some pretty catastrophic derailment issues if undiagnosed or detected too late.
“This is an example of where we work with our clients to tweak our model based on what’s important for them, and what is important for this client is to get the level of accuracy really, really high.”
So Uptake went to work, providing the client a clear blueprint for recognising the immediacy of a fault and when to action it, with the evidence that the service would save them money in the long run.
“We initially give this particular customer on average about 30 days lead time as a fault starts to manifest where it’s just starting to appear in the data. Then we upgrade that failure prediction generally within a twoweek period to a medium severity alert,” Fisher said.
“Then it becomes a high severity, critical failure alert with 100 per cent accuracy at seven days’ lead time. Think of that as going from a green alert to a yellow alert to a red alert.
“This lead time gives them sufficient runway to operationalise our insights, and accordingly they’ve told us they’re realising $35 million in additional revenue and cost savings over a five-year period.”
Data is extensive and critical business insights are often hidden within a mining company’s data. With the right personnel, data offers an opportunity to comprehend, analyse and then strategise – three things Uptake has down to a tee. AM
SHOWING CRANES WHO’S BOSS
THIS CRANE BRAKE SOLUTION FROM DELLNER BUBENZER IMPROVES MAINTENANCE DUTIES AND REMOVES THE RISK OF CATASTROPHIC FAILURE, ENSURING MINERS RECEIVE CARGO ON TIME AND IN ONE PIECE.
SUR Engineering is an Australian distributor for all things in port equipment, including design, fabrication, transport and commissioning, as well as project management.
To manage the demands of dozens of jobs around the country and in the Asia-Pacific region, SUR relies on the height of German engineering from Dellner Bubenzer, a global leader in braking systems for the materials handling and resources sector.
This is epitomised by a computer monitoring system called the Brake Only Snag System (BOSS).
BOSS mitigates one of the most dangerous aspects of crane operation. When containers get stuck in the ship’s cells, it can cause excess tension in the crane’s wire ropes, which can either snap, cause damage on mechanical equipment, or even pull the whole crane to the ground.
The BOSS will recognise the excess tension and shut off the crane motor while applying emergency brakes in under three-tenths of a second, removing the risk and maintaining the condition of the crane’s components.
Dellner Bubenzer’s global technical trainer Sascha Herbig told Australian Mining why the BOSS is so important.
“The advantage of this is we have full control over what is happening to our brakes,” Herbig said.
“We can include different sensors with the BOSS system, which can be installed in different positions to monitor the condition and position of the brakes from anywhere in the world with an internet connection.
“This is important in automated port terminals where the crane driver is somewhere far from the crane and unable to physically feel and react to things like snags. With the BOSS system, we can immediately detect if something is wrong.” The BOSS is made up of four different components: one load pin per cable monitors the tension; the BOSS PLC (programmable logic controller) processes the tension data from the load pin to constantly assess the tripping point; if the tension becomes too much, the service brake will be tripped; and if more stopping power is needed, an emergency brake is applied.
This fail-safe technology removes the chance of human error, according to Herbig.
“If you consider how crane drivers are positioned maybe 5m higher and 20m in front of the crane brakes, they may not hear or feel an issue in time to stop it. But the BOSS system sure will,” he said.
But no condition monitoring technology is complete without the human support to back it up, which is another point of pride for Dellner Bubenzer.
The company even goes as far as to offer Smart Glasses as a standalone or additional feature for maintaining its brake systems.
These glasses can be worn by on-site maintenance crews, giving Dellner Bubenzer’s remote support staff a first-person view as they support customers through the required maintenance procedures.
“These Smart Glasses can be rented for a period, if preferred, or they can be bought. We’re happy to accommodate our customers’ needs,” Herbig said.
“Perhaps they need them for a few months when they buy new brakes, or maybe they have some scheduled maintenance coming up which they will need the glasses for. “The best thing about the glasses is they
don’t get in the way of any safety helmets and they allow the customer to work hands-free while we support them in real time.”
However, if a customer of Dellner Bubenzer brakes does need on-site, in-person support, they’ll have no trouble getting it as soon as possible with support staff located in four continents.
Herbig said the company’s worldwide service network is a proud part of the business, delivering firstclass service, fast reaction times, highly qualified personnel, and minimal downtime.
“Dellner Bubenzer takes pride in a history of long-term satisfied customers who trust our commitment to excellence and recognise the value of our investment in our worldwide service network,” he said.
“To achieve superior customer service and product expertise, Dellner Bubenzer’s service, maintenance, and repair personnel receive ongoing and consistent instruction and training in the latest technology within state-of-the-art training facilities.”
Herbig said his technicians are trained in all aspects to accommodate whatever needs might arise once they arrive on site.
“They’re not just mechanics, electricians, programmers or cable runners. They can do all kinds of maintenance works needed for Dellner Bubenzer brake applications,” he said
“It’s no use sending someone out to you who can identify the problem without fixing it, so we make sure our team are the best and most widely trained available.” AM
PREMIUM PROCUREMENT STRATEGIES FOR OEMS IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA
CBC HELPS MAJOR ORIGINAL EQUIPMENT MANUFACTURERS TO PROCURE THE RIGHT SUPPLIES AT THE RIGHT TIME, KEEPING MINE INVENTORIES RUNNING LIKE A WELL-OILED MACHINE.
CBC WORKS WITH MANUFACTURERS OF VITAL HEAVY INDUSTRY EQUIPMENT.
A CBC CUSTOMER CAN NOW RELY ON A CONTINUOUS SUPPLY OF SHELL HYDRAULIC FLUID. THE SHELL HYDRAULIC FLUID COMES IN VARIOUS VOLUMES TO SATISFY ANY INVENTORY.
CBC heavy industry and mobile equipment expert Sheree Munnik advised her original equipment manufacturer (OEM) contracts that when it comes to procuring the right supplies at the right time, “if you fail to plan, you plan to fail.”
Her vested knowledge in the procurement side of the business has been amplified in recent years by her extensive involvement in the contract sales side of CBC’s Western Australian business arm, which frequently caters to the OEMs involved in the production of equipment for heavy industrial plants, ore mining, refineries, and quarrying processes.
“A fair few of my clients manufacture heavy mobile equipment like dump trucks, diggers and excavators that dominate the heavy industrial equipment market here in Perth,” Munnik told Australian Mining.
Not surprisingly, many of Sheree’s clients are looking to invest in premium-level products for their manufacturing processes – and that’s exactly where CBC comes in.
According to Munnik, with some of the more recent challenges procurement managers have faced, this has created a kind of convergence of opportunity to showcase the different capabilities that Motion Australia’s business possesses in terms of inventory, supply and distribution.
“I recently had the procurement manager from a reputable OEM reach out to me,” Munnik said.
“The contact wanted to discuss accessing hydraulic and gear oils for their batches of massive heavy earth moving loading trucks.
“Essentially, his hands were tied in terms of accessing supply due to difficulties with long lead times sourcing offshore products and he was looking for a premium quality onshore alternative that would be more readily available.”
Munnik deferred to her multibranded solutions basket of contacts to source lubricants from their range of available premium oils. She also suggested the OEM manager enter a procurement contract with CBC to benefit from their massive network of stock facilities and distribution channels.
“The client ordered a range of Shell products from our supplier Viva Energy Australia, including items from the Tellus T2 hydraulic oils and the Omala industrial gear oil ranges,” Munnik said
Since then, it has been full steam ahead with continuous ordering and supply.
“The client quickly made us their preferred onshore supplier,” Munnik said.
“And the relationship has been ongoing for about a year now. We monitor it quarterly and regularly check in on the client’s needs to make assessments and offer oil samples for their team to trial.”
This is just one example of the diverse spectrum of offerings CBC and Motion Australia offer to customers and it demonstrates the capabilities of not only the business as a whole, but similarly, the tremendous aptitude of representatives like Munnik.
As far as industry trends this year, Munnik noted that one of the biggest trends she has seen is indeed a tendency to improve logistics processes.
“I have noticed it is all about planning for a lot of customers right now,” she said. “People are focused on performing regular stocktake and forecasting into the next year.
“It is our goal to help customers stay on top of these planning initiatives.”
Munnik’s tips for keeping ahead of stock: • Perform regular stocktake every quarter • Plan ahead for the next quarter up to a year • Seek onshore solutions that will reduce lead times • Opt for investing in more premium products to eliminate the need for sooner replacement • Choose your supplier wisely • Consult with the experts at Motion
Australia – we are always ready for a conversation AM
SCHLAM’S ENGINEERING TEAM DEVOTED MONTHS TO DEVELOPING THE NEW HERCULES EXO.
SCHLAM MANUFACTURES MIRACLE WITH MARKET-LEADING DUMP BODY
COMBINING THE BEST OF BOTH WORLDS FOR A NEW FLAGSHIP MINE TRUCK BODY, SCHLAM HAS DONE WHAT WAS THOUGHT IMPOSSIBLE AND REDUCED WEIGHT WHILE INCREASING SERVICE LIFE. INTRODUCING THE HERCULES EXO.
As a leader in manufacturing mining equipment, Schlam leans on its 30 years of product development to find opportunities in the market – and in its own offerings.
Owner Ryan Schlam is said to drive a culture of never being completely satisfied with an existing product range, instead striving for the next big development.
That’s according to Schlam sales manager Tom Smith, who said the Hercules EXO represents that next big leap for the company and its customers.
“Prior to the EXO body, you have two choices when it comes to dump bodies,” Smith told Australian Mining.
“There’s the lightweight body with a short lifespan which maximises payload but doesn’t last as long; or you can choose a heavier body which lasts longer to the detriment of payload, while having to implement a costly structured maintenance regime.
“The goal with the EXO was to combine the two, so we worked backwards to find out what is most important in a body and found that it is the wearing components.
“We completely redesigned the previous Hercules to reduce the weight in all our non-wearing components. We’ve looked at all the structural componentry individually to reduce weight so we can maximise weight and thickness in the floor.”
This unheralded step in dump bodies is proven to more than double its service life while remaining lightweight, according to Smith.
He said a major inspiration behind the project was Schlam’s relationship with BHP’s Western Australian Iron Ore (WAIO) business arm, which called for its next order to reduce body weight without sacrificing service life.
“We’ve done a lot of work with BHP WAIO; we’ve supplied all their truck bodies for the last three years,” Smith said.
“They came to us in anticipation of the next bodies being required and asked us to look into reducing the body weight. So they were blown away by the end results and we were too, somewhat.
“It’s not directly led to, but it assisted in us securing this latest contract with BHP to supply all their bodies for the next four years.”
The Hercules EXO takes advantage of the quality in Schlam’s major steel supplier, SSAB. The new body uses SSAB’s Hardox 500 Tuf steel, which has the wear properties of Hardox 500 combined with the weldability of Hardox 450.
Smith admitted he was personally unsure of the bold claims being made by SSAB, but he was pleasantly surprised to find truth in the gamechanging material.
“As an engineer, I was very sceptical of what they were advertising. Hardox 500 Tuf has been in the market for about four years but a lengthy trial proved them to be true and the results speak for themselves,” Smith said.
Schlam chief executive officer Matt Thomas was especially proud of the job his team has done with the Hercules EXO.
“This is a young engineering team that really went through and modelled every aspect of this product by thinking outside the square to figure out how we can reduce the weight while still getting more serviceability out of it,” Thomas said.
“They’re innovative, interested and keen, and I think they should be celebrated for the results they’ve achieved.”
And the cost benefit of the EXO model goes well beyond reducing maintenance duties, which can cost up to 500 labour hours alone, at a time when labour is hard to come by.
Smith described a few other flowon effects of investing in the EXO dump body.
“Another cost benefit is the reduced annualised capital cost – if the bodies last longer, you don’t need to buy as many of them,” he said.
“Also, the increased payload from reduced body weight will reduce overall truck hours. If your truck is 10-tonne lighter and twice as strong, you could potentially save $100,000 per body per year in just reduced truck hours on a major mine site.”
And for an industry that’s increasingly regulated for environmental compliance, Schlam considers how it can reduce its own and its customers’ footprints.
A body like EXO uses less steel per unit while lasting longer and is a good example of Schlam’s devotion to greener mining.
“We know how much carbon is created by steel production, and the whole industry is looking at this very closely, including at Schlam,” Smith said.
“So having a body which uses less steel to manufacture, while also being replaced half as often, that has a massive net benefit on the environment and for the operator.
“Over eight years, you’ll be using 25 tonnes of steel instead of 60 tonnes of steel.”
An additional environmental benefit comes in the form of Schlam’s body-scrapping service, which has ramped up considerably over the past 18 months. Smith said the company intends to continue this trajectory.
“We can arrange for bodies that have reached the end of their life to be decommissioned and recycled instead of sitting in the corner of a mine site collecting dust,” he said.
“To complete that cycle, a large percentage of our bodies are made from 100 per cent recycled steel.”
But delaying the need for bodies to be scrapped is ideal, so Schlam’s dedicated technical support team will accompany any new body to site should the customer require it, especially in the case of a first-time user.
This team can include representatives from Schlam’s sales team, engineers, or various other technical specialists.
Such an approach has come from an understanding that not everything will always run smoothly, Smith said.
“We understand that things can go wrong with our products in a very harsh mining environment. Cracks can occur and, occasionally, components can be hard to come by these days,” he said.
“But the way we respond to concerns raised by customers is something that we’re very proud of.”
And in the interest of responding to customers’ needs, Schlam isn’t just stopping at the EXO for vastly improved mining equipment.
Smith hinted that the materials science behind the new model would soon be applied to a range of Schlam’s products, providing a flow-on effect that will see the company move from strength to strength.
“We have one project we’ve been working on for quite a while now – a new type of dump bucket which uses a similar methodology to the Hercules EXO to reduce weight and increase service life, which we are aiming to release to site before the end of the financial year,” Smith said. AM
THE HERCULES EXO DUMP BODY COMBINES LONGEVITY WITH REDUCED WEIGHT.
THE HERCULES EXO IS MADE FROM SSAB’S HARDOX 500 TUF WEAR STEEL.
WEIR MINERALS IS TRANSFORMING MINE SITE MILL OPERATIONS
SINCE ITS LAUNCH IN 2018, MANY MINING OPERATORS FROM AROUND THE GLOBE HAVE IMPLEMENTED THE VULCO R67 COMPOUND INTO THEIR MILL LINING SYSTEMS. THEY HAVE REPORTED AS MUCH AS 20–40 PER CENT IMPROVEMENT IN WEAR LIFE, RESULTING IN FEWER MILL LINING REPLACEMENTS AND LONGER MILL CAMPAIGNS.
MILL OPERATORS HAVE EXPERIENCED A WIDE RANGE OF BENEFITS THAT INCLUDE IMPROVED WEAR LIFE.
Vulco rubber is renowned throughout the mining industry for its exceptional wear life and reliability in mill lining systems.
These abrasion and impactresistant rubber compounds have been developed with advanced technologies by the Weir Minerals’ team of expert engineers and material scientists who are continually refining Vulco rubber products to keep them at the forefront of mill lining systems technology.
Having identified a need for higher-wearing rubbers for mill lining systems, the material science experts commenced developing an industry-leading, premium-grade rubber compound with superior wear life and performance in mill lining applications.
The result was the Vulco R67 rubber – an optimum material which is manufactured with proprietary new compounds and innovative methods of processing to deliver outstanding wear life and longer uptime.
Extensive field research, compound testing and site trials were conducted to ensure that it was not only able to withstand severe abrasion in typical mill system applications, but that it is best in class.
It has been the most wear-resistant rubber compound that Weir Minerals has ever developed for mill lining applications. The R67 compound boasts a high hardness, elongation, tensile and tear strength, and is suitable for lifter bars, head/shell plates and grates.
When it’s utilised in conjunction with metal cap mill liners, the result is a versatile, economical and efficient product that weighs up to 50 per cent less than steel alone. The added benefit is a lighter product that’s faster, easier and safer to install.
This reduction in shutdowns has a dual benefit of increased cost savings and improved plant availability.
With a liner that can run significantly longer, operators have experienced a wide range of benefits that include improved wear life, a measurable reduction in mill downtime and increased uptime and processing.
Vulco R67 also enables easier and safer installations, as well as reduced maintenance costs
In addition, the mines benefit from having an experienced and dedicated team from Weir Minerals who custom-engineer the liners to suit each mill’s unique requirements for optimal wear life.
The R67 elastomer compound is changing the way mills operate – with exceptional results. Extensive global trials and commercial installations in the market have resulted in a number of successful outcomes across a variety of different grinding applications. From mines in the US to Chile, the R67 has proven its outstanding performance consistently.
As an example, a high-grade nickel and copper mining project in the US had a problem where the liners in one ball mill were wearing out too quickly, leading to continued downtime and reduced processing.
The project was looking for a product significantly superior to the elastomer that they were using. Initially there was reluctance from the mine, as they had loyalty to their original mill supplier; however, after Weir Minerals conducted a series of trajectory simulations and discreet modelling, to optimise the design and deliver the best process performance for the mill, they agreed to trial the R67 liners. At the end of the trial the R67 showed 30–40 per cent better performance than the incumbent liners and the customer installed a full set of R67 liners in their mill.
Another trial in the US took place in an iron ore mine with several dozen ball mills in operation. Here, Vulco R67 liners delivered a 17 per cent increase in life compared to the failed shell plates from the mine’s original mill lining system supplier.
The company was extremely impressed with the results and installed a complete shell liner in their ball mill.
Another copper processing plant in Chile trialled R67 composite liners in their SAG mill against two other compounds that are commonly used in the industry. After 12 months, there was a 48 per cent and 62 per cent wear life improvement on the other liners, proving that the R67 composite liners could withstand the highly abrasive environment.
As leaders in material technology, Weir Minerals are continuously undertaking research and development to provide best-inclass products to mining customers, while helping them improve their bottom line.
When using Vulco R67 rubber compounds, Weir Minerals’ customers can feel assured they have a marketleading product that is backed by decades of experience, expertise, and proven effectiveness. This innovative rubber compound not only delivers superior physical and viscoelastic properties, but is also a lighter and safer material to use. AM
WEIR MINERALS’ VULCO R67 MILL LINERS ARE FASTER, EASIER AND SAFER TO INSTALL.
