LOADRITE Down Under!
LOADRITE operates in an underground mine situated at the bottom tip of New South Wales, Australia. The mine processes ore through a plant comprising a crushing, grinding and flotation circuit to produce a gold rich copper concentrate. Gold is also recovered from the coarsest fraction of the flotation concentrate using a centrifugal concentrator. Over the life of the mine 255Mt of ore and 470Mt of waste are processed.
The mine operates a sub-level caving mining process which requires that a certain, predetermined tonne is removed from the ore body. Each loader is given a set tonnage that it must not exceed on each load.
Underground Operations Before LOADRITE
Five years ago the loader operators were using a manual counter to tally the number of buckets of ore extracted from the ground. This method proved inaccurate as operators would sometimes forget to count loads or would count a load twice. It also relied on consistent loads being lifted every time.
LOADRITE Reduces Uncertainty for the Underground Mine
To automate this process nine LOADRITE systems where installed on both Sandvik Tamrock Toro and Caterpillar Elphinstone machines. After each load is lifted the loader operator calls mine control and reads the tonnage off the LOADRITE LCD display to provide real time material monitoring. In addition each loader has a LOADRITE data capsule in the cab so as the loader lifts a load this is recorded by the data capsule. When the operator leaves the mine he unplugs the data capsule and takes it to mine control where the information is downloaded to the mine's management system where it is cross checked against the voice recordings of each load. Without LOADRITE this whole process would be time consuming and cumbersome. Each load is weighed automatically removing the uncertainty of a manual system. Data is transferred via the LOADRITE data capsule to be used both as a cross check of data and to input into the mine's management information system to generate useful management reports.
"LOADRITE provides the accuracy we require. I don't believe there's anything else on the market that would compare."