Minerals and Mining

The profession of mining is associated with various dangers, and the key dangers are not related to machineries such as vibration, dust, and noise. Similarly, the mining incidents related to the hydraulics are not related to the equipment but they majorly occur with haulage, conveyors, dumping, milling, crushing, forklifts, and tunnel-boring. Therefore, mining hydraulic equipment should be made safer not only by the methods used in the circuitry but also in the quality of the component construction. If these challenges are addressed, the forces and loads involved in mining make hydraulics an ideal choice.

The list of mining equipment that can benefit from hydraulics is as follows:

• Excavators
• Trucks
• Dozers
• Dragline
• Customer Service Equipment
• Main pumps, Swing pumps, and fan pumps
• Travel motors, swing motors, and fan motors
• Main control valves
• Cylinders
• Gearboxes

The safety considerations of hydraulic systems in the mining industry should be a top priority because incidents may incur huge losses to the organization. The explosion-related injuries and deaths are unfortunate in the mining industry that can be prevented by the proper maintenance of hydraulic systems. Mining is a big business, and the total volume of hydraulic fluid in the equipment has been estimated at around 3,500 gallons. Hydraulic circuits are composed of closed-loop control of pressure, and the track’s wheel motors use hydraulic retardation values for preventing over speed. These systems require periodic maintenance and cleaning to avoid contamination and ensure the smooth functioning of the machines. 

In an industry with needs for large hydraulic systems, design and engineering teams choose HydroSym and HydroMan software with which it easy to design hydraulic systems and manifolds of any size. Keeping track of all the hydraulic parts is also easy with the built in PARO library of over 40,000 hydraulic components making the schematics one point of truth for all future maintenance.