This winter has been a successful season for ShovelMetrics™ with installations and upgrades at mines around the world. A South African platinum mine is upgrading their existing ShovelMetrics systems to include fragmentation analysis. At this particular mine, we previously installed ShovelMetrics missing tooth detection systems on seven CAT 6060 hydraulic shovels and one TZ WK55 excavator. Over the next few months each of these shovels will be outfitted with in-bucket fragmentation analysis capabilities.
Using an overhead camera mounted on the shovel arm and advanced algorithms these eight systems will calculate the particle size distribution of material inside the bucket. Information including segmented bucket images and rock fragmentation charts are then uploaded to Metrics Manager™ Pro, our online data management platform, which can be accessed remotely by mine staff looking to improve the mine’s blasting parameters.
Fragmentation Analysis on Metrics Manager™ Pro
Closer to home, Motion Metrics recently received two purchase orders from a Canadian gold mine for ShovelMetrics missing tooth detection systems. The mine’s brand new CAT 6060 hydraulic shovel will receive a new missing tooth detection system, while another CAT 6060, which currently uses an older version of our missing tooth detection system, will receive an upgrade to our latest version.
The installations will help prevent potentially dangerous and costly missing tooth incidents. A missing shovel tooth that goes undetected has a detrimental effect on digging efficiency and can end up being hauled away and jamming the crusher or damaging downstream equipment.
Crusher jams are especially serious as they require a dangerous tooth retrieval process and long periods of downtime that can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost productivity