Zenith in action.
With its next generation of ground-engaging tools, supported by intelligent digital offerings, Bradken is driving the future of surface mining.
Bradken has evolved over the past 100 years to become a leading wear solutions provider to the global mining and resources market, delivering ground-engaging tools (GET), bucket and undercarriage solutions that equip customers to achieve their production objectives.
The company’s range includes mining buckets for excavators, face shovels and front-end loaders. Its buckets have long been known for their proven quality, reliability and performance.
The cast beam bucket, the latest in Bradken’s bucket range, takes that proven history of success and dials it up to 11.
“Buckets are traditionally fabricated and that inherently means you have structural welds in areas that are highly stressed and fatigue prone – particularly around the upper structure or beam of the bucket,” Bradken head of product and marketing, Simon Burgoyne, told Australian Mining.
“This results in a lot of bucket maintenance cost and asset downtime.
“We have leveraged our foundry expertise to design a new bucket that converts the entire beam into a casting. The cast structure gave us the freedom to design smoother and more organic transitions, placing steel where it’s needed to reduce stress throughout the beam. Importantly, the design eliminates welds from fatigue-prone areas and that, along with Bradken’s proprietary alloy, has produced a structure with significantly longer fatigue life that is more durable and reliable.”
The result is a bucket that delivers a stronger, safer, and more productive solution than a fabricated counterpart.
“We’re projecting that the cast beam will last up to 2.5 times longer than a fabricated bucket,” Burgoyne said. “This gives the customer a reliable asset, less downtime repairing buckets, and better productivity as the shape of the bucket has been optimised for dig efficiency.”
The Zenith plate lip GET system is also new to Bradken’s range. Engineered to minimise dig energy and extend the wear life of its points, the Zenith design is reliable and intuitive to use.
“Zenith is a next-generation plate lip GET system from Bradken and has been engineered to suit excavators from 100-tonne up to the 250-tonne class,” Burgoyne said.
The Zenith plate lips currently come in standard, long and heavy-duty options, to suit all application requirements.
Beyond efficiency, Zenith is designed to keep workers safe.
“Once GET has been used for a long time, it can become fused to the bucket and requires tools like sledgehammers and oxy torches to remove it,” Burgoyne said.
“This exposes operators to all sorts of hazards, including burns, hammer strikes and dangerous metal shards.
“The industry has been trying to move away from using hammers with GET for a while now. A lot of vendors have been able to introduce locking systems that don’t require hammers to remove points, but very few have been able to produce a truly hammer-free GET system like Zenith.
“Zenith has been designed so that it doesn’t require a hammer on the lock or in the removal of any part from the lip. It stays on when you want it to stay on, and it’s easily removed when you want to take it off.”
In support of these innovations and building on its longstanding digital product, SmartLiner, used in fixed plant for asset management and condition monitoring, Bradken is further expanding its digital offerings to include a range of solutions that enable customers to get the most out of their GET.
Bradken’s GETVision solution provides a remote monitoring system that detects GET on mining buckets and alerts operators if they become lost, delivering an operational benefit that reduces downtime and costs related to delayed production.
“Through the use of a vision system and object detection algorithms, GETVision detects the loss of GET on a machine, which can be quite disruptive to production were it to fall into plant equipment,” Bradken principal product manager, digital, Tim Radbone told Australian Mining. “It’s a huge problem when an uncrushable bit of steel falls off and gets stuck inside a crusher, for example.”
GETVision alerts operators in the event of GET loss, helping mine sites avoid catastrophic and expensive disruptions.
Bradken Inspect is another digital tool the company has developed.
Bradken Inspect is a mobile app allowing operators to digitally capture wear-life data for GET, helping to efficiently coordinate change-out timing for maintenance scheduling and monitor wear trends for forecasting maintenance programs.
“GET wear-life data has historically been captured on paper which is easily lost and difficult to collate for any useful analysis or insights,” Radbone said.
“Bradken Inspect allows workers to capture that information digitally to provide sites with a more detailed level of understanding of their GET usage.”
Bradken Inspect can be used both online and offline to capture information and supply detailed reports. Report outcomes allow the operations to determine wear metrics relevant to conditions and maintenance requirements.
“Whether a site’s GET is lasting three months or they’re chewing through parts on a daily basis, Bradken Inspect can help customers understand GET wear rates and performance across their fleet,” Radbone said.
The latest additions to Bradken’s range of GET, along with the supporting digital tools, are helping to make operations more predictable, safer and efficient. From its traditional manufacturing origins to today’s mining solutions brand, Bradken is constantly pushing the envelope when it comes to surface mining technology.