Mining systems’ productivity is dependent on mechanical equipment availability. Strategies designed to de-risk production and assure availability are especially important in challenging market conditions. Progressive CBM and RCM risk management strategies are increasingly including proactive techniques to de-risk operations and improve asset availability. Harsh mine operating environments present some of the most challenging conditions for equipment systems. Maintenance and reliability strategies that are simple in design and application generally deliver the best outcomes within the mining industry. By contrast, complex strategies utilizing moving parts or electronic controls and monitoring can frequently introduce secondary problems, additional maintenance complexity and often do not deliver the intended results. Mag-Shield magnetic filtration is a passive, proactive system that reduces total cost of ownership without moving parts, electronic support, monitoring or additional maintenance routines. In 2012, tribology related issues cost the mining industry $5B in Canada and $30B in the U.S. Relatedly, most hydraulic system failures are unplanned maintenance outages. They are expensive systems to repair with commonly recurrent and catastrophic failures. Filtration and oil analysis programs are mostly reactive and limited in their ability to control and predict hydraulic system failures. By use of high-energy magnetic scrubbing, the Mag-Shield system effectively mitigates common failures, as demonstrated by field results. This power point presentation will focus on actual results from a range of mobile mine equipment applications.
