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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SHOVELS & EXCAVATORS MAY 2018 • E&MJ; 49 www.e-mj.com tem will be released later this year. It has the potential to: • Increase shovel productivity by 4% to 35%; • Contribute up to two to eight additional loads per hour; • Reduce swing time by up to 15%; • Reduce shovel energy consumption due to hang time; and • Achieve additional gains by eliminating re-spotting. Technologies to Increase Shovel Uptime Shovels are some of the most important pieces of equipment on a mine site, but maintenance for them is often overlooked; since many haul trucks use a fleet man- agement system that helps to centralize in- coming data via telemetry, they can provide more information for maintenance teams to immediately act on. Key performance indi- cators (KPIs) for maintenance often place emphasis on fleet availability. Since mines typically have more trucks than shovels in their fleets, truck maintenance is often the fastest and easiest way to fulfill this KPI. But from a production standpoint, having a plethora of available trucks means very little if no shovel is available to load them. Additionally, shovels receive a high-op- erational priority, which can conflict with maintenance initiatives. Prolonging scheduled maintenance might help sus- tain production in the short term, but of- ten results in increased and unscheduled downtime later if the prolonged mainte- nance results in a failure or increased wear and tear to the shovel. Planned shovel maintenance requires careful time management. Modular's Mi- neCare Maintenance Management solu- tion helps maintenance teams prioritize objectives from a condition-based ap- proach, rather than a time-based one, re- lying on OEM and custom-defined alarms to identify potential issues before they result in catastrophic damage and costly downtime. The MineCare solution is OEM agnostic, providing interfaces to the most OEMs in the industry, and allows users to establish custom alarms based on time series data and OEM events. The solution captures such time series data as: • Stress monitoring for shovel boom, arm and frame; • Engine and related energy consumption; • Hydraulics and electrical systems; and • Digging conditions and blast quality. The MineCare solution's ability to col- lect an abundant amount of data from each of the shovels across a site's fleet, and translate that data into actionable in- formation, can help maintenance teams decrease their unplanned shovel mainte- nance to further increase productivity. As the mining industry continues to rebound, mines will continue to look for ways to optimize efficiencies wherever they can. Since shovels and excavators play such a critical role in the open-pit mining process, their productivity, up- time and availability become excellent optimization targets. Through machine guidance, operator assist, and mainten- ance management technologies, Modu- lar Mining Systems provides the value mines need to optimize their equip- ment, empower their people and drive production. This article was written and submitted by Modular Mining Systems. For more infor- mation, contact www.modularmining.com.