Engineering & Design: Mechanical | Mining | Data Collection & Analysis
Regular maintenance shutdowns on heavy mining equipment are essential for repairs but expensive due to lost production time. In a shovel shutdown, a jacking “beak” is a cantilevered frame that allows the machine’s upper works to be split, allowing access to undercarriage components. This beak must be modular, suit the shovel design and withstand the huge forces of jacking the machine. A mining services contractor contacted FIELD Engineers, wanting a beak design that was faster to use, resulting in cost savings for a shutdown.
FIELD Engineers designed the beak to pin into the shovel’s boom foot lugs, without any welding or modification to the shovel structure. This was fast and easy (if anything on a shovel shutdown is ever easy!). FIELD also LIDAR-scanned the shovel to create an accurate 3D model, which allowed the complex beak to be fully fabricated ahead of the shutdown.
This beak design fits and detaches faster than any previous design, reducing shutdown duration by 23%. It also creates lower stresses (and a higher safety margin) in the beak structure and connections, and in removing welding from the beak set-up, allows welding crews to focus on repair works. FIELD Engineers’ considerable expertise in jacking studies, heavy mining equipment and shutdown projects combined in this project to return safer, faster shutdowns, and our end-to-end service was in full display, from concept to design to fab drawings, all in-house.
When everyone else is scratching their heads or telling you it can’t be done give us a call.
