MST

TRACKING and emergency communication devices identified by Australian mines as technology to help meet their duty of care requirements will be on show for US producers at this year’s MINExpo.

The technology has found success at a number of Australian mines, including Austar, the first and only longwall top coal caving coal mine in the country.

Owned by China’s Yancoal Group, Austar has installed 238 of Mine Site Technologies’ ICCL Cap Lamps equipped with active RFID Tag and PED pager.

The MST technologies were implemented as a vital part of Austar’s safety systems, in particular for emergency preparedness.

The underground tracking system allows management to know where every miner is underground should an emergency situation arise. The tracking system also helps monitor people as they move out of the mine in an evacuation.

Apart from tag readers located at the start of all working panels and at the surface, Austar has also placed readers at the self-rescuer/CAB caches, to log people as they enter these areas during an evacuation.

Self-contained RFID Tags will also be fitted to underground vehicles to provide day-to-day management of these assets, to increase utilization.

The PED System forms part of the mine’s emergency warning system, allowing miners to be alerted by text message in an emergency situation, regardless of where they are located in the mine. The PED can also direct or update people as they evacuate.

The PED and Tracking system consists of PED Transmission System with two headends powering two underground antennas; 236 ICCL lightweight cap lamps with integrated RFID Tag and PED Pager receiver; 13 TRACKER Read Beacons; 25 Self Contained Tags for mounting on vehicles; and 4 Zone Display Units to provide access control into mining areas.

According to MST’s Denis Kent the combination of PED and Tracking gives Austar a powerful safety and management tool that will contribute to the mine’s productivity and emergency preparedness.

Marathon Tyres

MARATHON Tyres has invested further into research and development for its Marathon RL product range, with the introduction of a new Deflection Machine.

The new purpose-built machine, which will be based at the company’s Newcastle, Australia factory – which manufactures for the US market – was designed and built to impose a simulated load on the tire and RL. The machine can measure hydraulically or with a digital load cell in tons allowing up to 30t to be tested accurately.

The RL is a reusable rubber liner insert designed to be fitted into the cavity of a tire to stop punctures and to offer a simulated pressure with the internal honeycomb-shaped holes that run circumferentially within the RL.

The RL’s sidewall deflection has the same deflection that a pneumatic tire would have for the same given load. This allows the sidewall of the tire and the RL to flex in harmony with each other while being used.

With the deflection machine under load, the sidewall and RL need to operate as one at a given pressure. The machine also maps the tire footprint, which allows the factory engineer to compare the footprint of a pneumatic as well as an RL fitment.

With the recent strong sales of RL Inserts for underground mining equipment, Marathon has also arranged for onsite heat studies to be conducted on a shuttle car used in an underground coal mine.

Marathon will be exhibiting at MINExpo to show how the new RL fitments make tires safer for underground mine use while keeping down the cost per hour for mining houses.

SSAB Oxelosund

Integrated steel manufacturer SSAB Oxelosund will feature its special steels and demonstrate its wear prediction software at MINExpo.

“With demand and prices for minerals at all-time highs, lost production is more costly than ever,” said company officials.

“For years, SSAB Oxelösund has been developing harder, stronger and tougher wear materials to reduce downtime and maintenance costs.”

For this reason, the company said its exhibition at MINExpo 2008 would include a collection of wear-plate products and services for mining and quarrying suppliers and their end-use customers that offer a high return on investment.

SSAB Oxelosund said customers would be able to find the perfect wear plate for the job, depending on the application, the abrasiveness of minerals being handled, and the right balance between service intervals, downtime and material costs.

On hand at the show will be the company’s Wear Technology Group specialists, who can assist in analysing the wear processes specific to a customer’s operation as well as finding an effective design solution. By doing so, SSAB Oxelösund said, operations can bring benefits to their equipment such as longer service life and payload and overall profitability.

The group experts will also be presenting the company’s HARDOX relative wear concept and WearCalc prediction software, which compares sliding wear as a function of mineral composition and wear-plate abrasion resistance.

SSAB will also be displaying its wear plate for mining applications; steel-resistant plates HARDOX 450 and HARDOX 500 with a hardness of 450 HBW and 500 HBW are its flagship products.

HARDOX 450 is ideal for applications such as dumpers, crushers, sieves, feeders, skips, cutting edges, liners, hammers, conveyors and buckets.

The next step, the HARDOX 550, is also useful for protection against impact and sliding wear, requiring no work-hardening to achieve its 550 HBW level of hardness.

Meanwhile, the HARDOX 600 meets aggressive wear environments such as chutes, armoured face conveyors and other high-wear applications in mining equipment.

Finally, SSAB said, its 650-700 HBW-rated HARDOX Extreme does just that – perform under extreme industry conditions to provide longer wear life.

“The combination of extreme wear resistance and workshop friendliness allows enhanced workshop productivity and facilitates fabrication of customised wear parts,” SSAB officials said.

“HARDOX Extreme can be welded, cut, milled and drilled using standard workshop practices.”