Published in Australia's Longwalls

The latest additions to the voice communication system allow a direct interface to the underground telephone system at each or selected stations. This makes each conveyor or longwall communication system a telephone interface, allowing phone in and phone out capabilities.

“The Austdac voice communication system continues to be the most reliable product on the market today, and the only system to give reliable, clear voice communication over five to six kilometre conveyors,” the company said.

Each voice communication station can now be fitted with indication, giving line voltage, line current, battery voltage, battery current, speaker status providing simple and rapid fault-finding.

Each new station is fully compatible with existing systems, ensuring an easy plug and play transition to the latest technology on existing installations. No other systems are compatible with existing Austdac installations.

Austdac said its conveyor monitoring and control system is the most commonly used product throughout the conveyor industry providing the most flexible, reliable system for conveyors over ten kilometres long on one lanyard pull wire cable.

This allows analogue values from devices such as temperature monitoring, vibration monitoring, CO and smoke detection along a conveyor to be incorporated into the one cable lanyard system.

The transmission system allows sequencing and remote isolation of numerous stations along the conveyor network from one central control point and sequencing and remote isolation of several trippers on extended longwall conveyor systems without the need for extra cabling.

“The unique filtering on the main controller has proven to be extremely noise immune to severe harmonics generated by VVVF drive modules that are becoming more commonly used throughout the industry,” the company said. Several Austdac installations are operating in VVVF drive installations successfully.

Many sites are now using the transmission system for remote data gathering on applications such as longwall monitoring and control. This includes the remote switching and monitoring of oil and water solenoids along the longwall face using the existing control and monitoring system. Austdac recently incorporated signalling from longwall manufacturer’s control systems onto the face control system, minimising cabling on the longwall.

The transmission system is also used for long distance remote data gathering for applications such as mine-wide gas monitoring and Austdac recently installed systems to provide real time roof convergence monitoring to surface computers.

The Austdac system is presently being updated to comply with the International Standard for Safety Systems using programmable devices, IEC 61508.

“With our multinational partners, Carlo Gavazzi, the transmission system is being assessed to a SIL level 3 by internationally recognised testing authority TUV in Germany,” the company said.

The new IEC 6158 controller will be available late 2004 and will provide Austdac customers with a guaranteed system compliant to the latest standards.

With over 450 installations in Australia and overseas the Austdac solution is universally accepted as a reliable safe conveyor emergency stop system.