Underground Mining gear

Thought i would start off an underground thread....send in your pics and interesting info..

Sandvik gear ..previously known as Tamrock or Toro equipment

A 0011 Loader with a Rock breaker, a 3 boom jumbo

One that came in the other day via the email....

Cat Dr. said:

One that came in the other day via the email....

Click to expand...

Where was that one??

Madmark73 said:

Where was that one??

Click to expand...

Just down there on that sharp right

Some very intresting bits of kit. That breaker is something else though. Would need more than ear plugs when that baby starts to work in a tunnel

Originally Posted by Madmark73
Where was that one??

Not Sure mate, got a email the other day at work from an operator here full of random carnage....

Thought I would revive this thread, here are some pictures of a scoop we received two years ago before it came underground.
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All our gear is dismantled and slung down the shaft since we do not have a connecting ramp. The scoop and two more like it were taken apart and slung underground, then reassembled. Here are some pictures, I forgot to set the date on the camera. Pictures were taken in 2011. mainframe in the head frame, coming down the shaft,pulling out of the shaft on the 2100levelfinally in the shop.

Some more pics,

Final assembly

That's pretty cool! I know of a mine were some of those were left because they didn't want to take them apart to get them out when it closed, and they mined the ramps out so it couldn't drive out either.

I have been there almost twelve years and have only seen four machines brought out. The old ones were taken to a old part of the mine, had the oils and fuel drained out, then they were pushed into a open stope and back filled the stope. Just to expensive to hoist them out. I will post some other pictures later of a CAT AD30 truck we assembled around the same time.

the only problem I see with your shop/jobsite is its DARK lol Its always cool there tho, sure beats this 90+ weather here.. you cant get any better than to take new equipment apart. you done a great job of reassembly of it!!!

Actually the shop I took the pictures in is darker than the one I usually work in, and not just because it's underground. Part of the problem is the guy running the camera. I need more practice. It is cool as you say which is nice. Just not as cool where the mining is going on.

I don't know about your mine, but underground at the Rosebery and Mt Lyell mine sites, both on the west coast of Tasmania, Australia, it is stinking hot! The Rosebery site is hotter by a fair bit than Mt Lyell, but on both sites, heat management is a big issue.
Love the photos of the Sandvik 621, I thought Cat R2900's were powerhouses until I saw a 621 working. Cat has nothing to match it yet.

This was my truck, a Cat AD55B, taken at Rosebery, when she first came on site after a full rebuild in the Barminco workshop at Hazelmere, West Australia. It was the fastest truck in the mine, being speed limited to 24KMH, the other B models could only do 21 and the old 6cylinder A models 19. She was a good truck, but like all B models was very hard to work on from an access perspective. Cat took a C27 engine and built a truck around it!

The truck sure looks nice! We have two AD30 CAT ejector trucks, and three DUX ET33 trucks. The DUX trucks are a major pain to work on, and we always have to work on them. No hydraulic coolers on them plus the exhaust blows across the top of the hydraulic tank. They used to have mufflers on them but the operators must not have liked them because they were smashed off after the first month we had them. The bosses gave up replacing them after a couple more times. The Cat trucks are better to work on but not as easy as a non underground piece of gear. Operators like them because they ride a lot better and you sit facing forward. Unfortunately some have run them into the wall enough that one of the windows won't fit anymore. They taped plastic over the hole the last time I saw it. Our mine is way cooler than yours. We are on the west coast of Canada and in the winter it's about 7 degrees Celsius in the cold spots, and about 17- 19 degrees in the summer. Way nicer than being on surface. I have never seen bigger underground stuff than ours since I have only worked at this mine, before that I worked in logging.

We had one AD30 ejector carting waste underground. It was a great little truck for fitting in tight spaces, but painfully slow and very rough riding compared to the AE 40 and AD55's. The 55's, while a nominal 55 tonne capacity, regularly humped loads of 70+ tonnes and if legend can be believed, one of the old AD40's copped a mammoth 103 tonne load. The mine at Rosebery is where the original prototype for the AD55B truck was trialled and it is still in service to this day. A few Atlas Copco MT6020's have made their way into service at Rosebery and the fitters love them for ease of accessibility to major components, but from a drivers perspective, they are a model T Ford compared to the Rolls Royce Cat AD55B. The Copco's do not have the longevity and rebuildability of the Cat either.

Our AD30's are speed limited to 14km/h. Our mine is obviously way smaller. Before we limited the speed I took the first one out for testing and had it wound up to 20, and it was still going. I shut it down because it was starting to bounce pretty Violently. I have heard Copco has had problems breaking wheel ends off at the New Gold mine near Kamloops BC. They don't limit the speed of their gear though. Our roads are pretty poor so it's a good thing we do.

The integrated retardation system on the CAT AD55's is brilliant. Not only can you lock gears out, but the computer can apply the brakes at any speed you set, (computer, not accessable to the operator). On the B models, the system also applies the brakes if you attempt to coast in angel gear or if engine revs are not kept above 1100.
As far as I know, the Copco's can only lock out gears and automatically apply their retarder in an engine over speed condition. The Copco tub hoists are pretty weak too - you have to distribute the load exactly right or the hoist won't lift the tub. The 27L V12 in the Cat seems to use less fuel than the 19L QSK Cummins in the Copco's, despite having around 50HP more power.
I guess it's pretty obvious by now that I like the CAT's much better than the Copco's.
I know what you mean about the AD30 being bouncy. I think my helmet imprint is still in the roof of the one I operated!
There were a couple of interesting variants of the AD55 at the Rosebery mine. One was an AD55 A model with a 50,000L water tank and hydraulic driven pump and sprays for washing the walls and backs of the decline and keeping the roadway moist for dust suppression. The other was an AD55 A model with tub removed and a 10 cubic meter agitator bowl fitted for delivering shotcrete and CRF. In order to get the bowl down low, the rear wheels were spaced out each side by nearly one wheel width. I didn't like the agitator version much as they were terrible at ripping down vent bags and damaging services. An issue not helped by the fact that all that particular contractors operators were green, mostly on their first job underground.
The AD55 A models had a Cat C18 motor fitted, punching out 680HP from memory. When these engines failed, they failed in spectacular style, usually with daylight visible from one side of the block to the other. My employer, Barminco, would not rebuild C18's, instead fitting brand new engines as needed. Their belief was that there had been too many failures in engines that they had rebuilt.