Engineering and Mining Journal - Whether the market is copper, gold, nickel, iron ore, lead/zinc, PGM, diamonds or other commodities, E&MJ takes the lead in projecting trends, following development and reporting on the most efficient operating pr
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MOTORS & DRIVES APRIL 2016 • E&MJ; 51 www.e-mj.com Drives for Excavators With its headquarters in Indiana, Flan- ders specializes in excavator-duty motors designed specifi cally to withstand the harsh applications inherent to draglines and electric rope shovels. According to Mike Casson, responsible for global busi- ness development for surface mining, there are now hundreds of Flanders' mo- tors in service worldwide, including AC in- duction motors, AC synchronous motors, DC motors and generators, and complete high-output motor-generator (MG) sets. Casson went on to note that one of the company's most popular dragline up- grade products is its M series of motors for hoist, drag, and swing applications, which provide signifi cantly increased thermal capacity and commutating abil- ity for increased rope speeds. With the industry focus of increasing dragline productivity to minimize cost/m 3 , these motors are often the most cost-effective option available for achieving maximum dragline production, he claimed, current- ly being in operation in both North and South America, Africa, and Australia. Flanders specializes in upgraded drag- line rotating apparatus, offering a variety of dragline options to meet the specifi c needs of the end user based on increased reliability and improved dragline perfor- mance. The company not only manu- factures new replacement apparatus for original DC equipment, and the M series of motors, but has also designed a line of high-output MG sets and the 1,000 series of AISE spec-based DC motors. The MG sets coupled with the 1024 and 1022 frame hoist and drag motors were designed about 10 years ago, Cas- son said, specifi cally for dragline custom- ers who were seeking signifi cantly higher rope speeds and bail pull, but were not yet ready to take the leap to an AC drag- line conversion. AC has inherent advantages over DC with lower maintenance costs, higher ef- fi ciency, increased performance capabil- ity, increased safety, and lower ambient noise levels in the machine house. An AC dragline conversion is no longer a new, unproven concept, as Flanders has now converted three walking draglines from DC to AC, using its in-house designed active front-end (AFE) drive system. The latest of these was a Marion 8200, which has been in successful operation since May 2014, while the machine with the company's fi rst AC retrofi t has now been working for more than fi ve years. Outside of motors and drives for min- ing equipment, Flanders also designs and manufactures large, special-purpose motors for minerals processing. An ex- ample is the company's 7,000-hp (5.2 MW)/200 rpm synchronous motors, two pairs of which were designed and built to power two large SAG mills. Spanish Specialization The Spanish company, Ingeteam, spe- cializes in the development of electrical equipment such as motors and frequency converters. The company mainly serves sectors such as energy, mining, industry, marine and rail traction, seeking to op- timize energy consumption whilst maxi- mizing generating effi ciency. Its mission is to develop in-house products that pro- vide customized solutions for the specifi c application involved. For mining, Ingeteam stated that it is set to become a global supplier of com- prehensive product solutions, featuring state-of-the-art power electronics and machines designed and manufactured A pair of 7,000-hp, 200-rpm synchronous motors, designed by Flanders to power SAG mills. The Ingedrive MV100 controller for both synchronous and asynchronous motors.