Surface mining Editorial Product and service

North American Mining: New technologies are supporting improved shovel maintenance practices, allowing mines to extend maintenance intervals

1 min read / October 10, 2022

MTS Shovel with MineCare monitoring 2000x850px.psb

Shovel breakdown

There are 5,500 hydraulic and 1,900 electric shovels with payloads above 20 metric tonnes currently active, according to the mining equipment trackers at The Parker Bay Company. These are large and complex pieces of machinery that operate in severe conditions.

The risk of component failure and breakdown is therefore ever present: as Emerson notes in the white paper on the topic, “something as common as sweeping a wall can break teeth in the gearbox and bring your production to a standstill.”

*This article was written by Jonathan Rowland for the September/October issue of North American Mining. Read the rest here.