Surface miners

[blitz138]

I've been in mining surface and underground almost my entire life but I've never seen this......Wirtgen Surface Miner, anyone ever operated one or had any experience on them?

http://www.hammcompactors.com/media/...m_mining_e.pdf

[John C.]

They use almost the same thing for grinding out old asphalt and concrete on roads. They are fast but expensive.

[RDG]

I think there is an Iron ore mine over in Western Oz that does all its mining with them, think some of the advantages are no drilling/blasting,face shovels/loaders crushing plants or large dump trucks. The surface miner cuts the material of the floor in a managable size and loads it straight on to trucks in one operation. You would think they would be hard on there cutting components but when u look at what machines they do away with I guess there is cost advantage. Cheers RDG.

[John C.]

They are kind of like a miniature long wall miner they use underground. I've also heard them called a road header.

The ones that eat asphalt around here can go at about a walking pace taking about a foot in depth at pass and as I recall almost four or more feet wide.

[alco]

Cloudbreak is the mine in Australia that uses surface miners. I think there may be another, but I can't recall the name right now. The miner doesn't always load the material into the trucks. Sometimes the machine leaves it on the ground and it is loaded out later by loaders.

If the rock is of the right composition and strength, then the surface miners can work well since they can achieve some production. But if the rock is too hard and is not easily handled by the miner's cutting head, they achieve very little, but to run up costs.

A longwall miner and a roadheader are quite different animals. While both can employ a rotating cutter head, the longwall miner can also run a shear to slice the coal from the working face. A longwall machine is semi portable, and is advanced slowly as it works a long cutting face, whereas a road header is a very portable machine that works a small area of the face, usually in ammanner similar to tunneling, or for tunneling itself.

[770G]

Looks just like a "Rotomill", chews up road surface

[RayF]

I've done a fair bit of machining and line boring on them.They are maintence hungry. Leightons/HWE had a fleet of them and I bored the holes the big bearings go in. I think around 18 inch roller bearings Leightons ended up selling thiers to FMG who have got a heap of them.They load straight into trucks.777's I think.

[alco]

I stumbled across a couple of pictures from Christmas Creek, I think this is the other mine I was thinking of. They aren't my pictures, so I can't repost them, but they show the surface miners leaving the material on the ground and loaders loading the haul trucks.

[rare ss]

Cloudbreak is the mine in Australia that uses surface miners. I think there may be another, but I can't recall the name right now. The miner doesn't always load the material into the trucks. Sometimes the machine leaves it on the ground and it is loaded out later by loaders.

If the rock is of the right composition and strength, then the surface miners can work well since they can achieve some production. But if the rock is too hard and is not easily handled by the miner's cutting head, they achieve very little, but to run up costs.

A longwall miner and a roadheader are quite different animals. While both can employ a rotating cutter head, the longwall miner can also run a shear to slice the coal from the working face. A longwall machine is semi portable, and is advanced slowly as it works a long cutting face, whereas a road header is a very portable machine that works a small area of the face, usually in ammanner similar to tunneling, or for tunneling itself.

I stumbled across a couple of pictures from Christmas Creek, I think this is the other mine I was thinking of. They aren't my pictures, so I can't repost them, but they show the surface miners leaving the material on the ground and loaders loading the haul trucks.

The idea is to strip with your large shovels and trucks and use the surface miners to load high grade ore direct into smaller trucks, trouble with the Wirtgen's is they are quite hard to keep running, big maintenance costs and just dont last, they are changing these units out for a larger (f&*$ken huge) Vermier unit's.. I dont know the model but they are around 220t and run twin C18's

[rare ss]

some pics can be found here