I need some help/advice

[Knucklehead]

I recently got a job working at a prep plant for a coal mine , as a dozer operator.I haven't been around any of the bigger Cat dozer's in years, I was pretty young when I was around them. Anyhow, they put on a old 9L that has 35,231(when I got off this morning) hours on it.I am pushing clean coal into a hopper that runs through 3 conveyors and into road trucks for the trip to the river.

Now here is where you guys come in. The only issue I am having is there is a slight turn between where the coal is piled and the hopper. How would you guys approach this? The way I am doing it now is I back up the pile and get all that i can push,when I get to where I need to turn,I drop enough to make the turn with minimal effort and take that to the hole. Then back up and get what I left and take it. If I have extra time, I will bring down enough to the turn to where I just back up and make a short,straight push. The problem is, I only get 1 hour that trucks are not coming in,and during that time I shut down long enough to service the machine.

Sorry this is so long winded,but I would like to get some input on this.
Thanks in advance Heath

 

[stumpjumper83]

are you turning with the blade or with the steering clutches? If your using the clutches, try tilting into the corner to steer, and leave the extra that falls away fropm the blade to form a slot, and just keep pushing thru the slot.... thats my $.02

 

[dirtpusher9]

are you turning with the blade or with the steering clutches? If your using the clutches, try tilting into the corner to steer, and leave the extra that falls away fropm the blade to form a slot, and just keep pushing thru the slot.... thats my $.02

Thats exactly how I would atack it.

 

[Vantage_TeS]

I'll add a third motion for that. The second you try to turn by clutch/braking you loose your pushing power. by using the corner of your blade both tracks are still getting full power but the machine "pivots" around the corner you stick down.

Dropping the dirt, repositioning and then coming back for what's left is wasting a lot of time.

Another thing you can do is do half pushes. Hold on I'm gonna bust out my tablet and make you a really terrible drawing.

 

[Vantage_TeS]

Here is my epic diagram.

Push a blade full from the pile until it's lined up with the hopper. Then go back and repeat until you have a small pile lined up with the hopper. Then push from the small pile to the hopper (you only repositioned once while doing this so you cut down on wasted time). Keep pushing in the same line so that everything that falls off the sides of the blade start to make a channel. Once the small pile is gone go back to the big pile.

After the big pile is gone then you do short little pushes knocking the edges into the middle and push those down the channel, repeating until the channel is gone.

You only lose dirt off the sides until your channel is high enough, then you can push almost twice the dirt in front of you without loosing anything around the sides!

Also you only loose "loading" time the first time you start making your little pile. After that you gain time pushing from the small pile to the hopper (half the push) but then loose time again going from big pile to small (balances out in the end, except you don't loose time repositioning for every single push at the corner). The trick is that every time you have a gap in trucks go back to the big pile and build up the smaller one.

The other way is to use your blade to corner which will eventually build the same channel, but with a "super" (side slope) and a curve in it. As long as the curve isn't too sharp you could just push from the big pile through the curved channel into the hopper. Otherwise go back to the "half pushing" method.

 

[Knucklehead]

are you turning with the blade or with the steering clutches? If your using the clutches, try tilting into the corner to steer, and leave the extra that falls away fropm the blade to form a slot, and just keep pushing thru the slot.... thats my $.02

I guess I should have added that, that is how I am doing it. The problem being there is 3 of us that do this for 23 hours a day. I am the one that gets the hour break. I usually have enough time between trucks at the start of my shift that I can work enough down the pile to get me through the 4 a.m. rush. The other 2 guys have trucks spread out through the day so they get time to work the big pile. I get to watch them line up and wait.

To add fuel to the fire, they are loading a train right now. That means that in addition to my trucks, I also had to push into the reclaim hopper. Funny thing was that at 11 p.m. it was 4,000 tons, at 3 a.m. it was 5,000 tons that was needed to finish the train???

Nice art work Vantage, and thanks for everyone's help!!!

Heath

 

[MKTEF]

I'm not the guy with tens of tousands of hours in the dozer...

I would have made a "channel"/slot with coal to the hopper.
Made a slight sideway slope inside the channel to get the turn right.
Like you got in a racecar track.
Positive things would be it would be slot dozing, and the slight sideway slope would eliminate the use of stearing clutches.
I know the big cats aint fond of sideslopes, but it dont need to be more than having your doser turn by itself.