Mining services – parts, people and partnership

Mine optimisation aims to reduce downtime, increase the amount of sellable product and reduce the amount of raw materials, energy, chemicals and water required for the process. Typical examples of mining optimisation are extending a mill liner’s life to reduce downtime, more efficiently controlling a grinding mill to reduce energy consumption and improving the recovery rate so as to increase sellable product. Typically, these improvements are delivered through improved equipment, process or consumable design; better sensing or control functionality; and parameter optimisation.

A retrofit is adding a component or accessory to a piece of equipment that it did not have when it was manufactured. An upgrade is adding to a piece of equipment something that enhances it compared to an earlier version. The main difference is that a retrofit does not necessarily enhance it compared to the original version, for example if the original assemblies are no longer available you use a comparable alternative, while an upgrade does. 

In general, there are 4 different types of maintenance:  

• Reactive maintenance – a piece of equipment is run to failure and then the piece of equipment is fixed. In the mining industry as unplanned downtime is costly, the aim is generally never to have an unexpected failure in the main production process and be required to carry out reactive maintenance.   
• Preventive maintenance – this requires a process to be stopped and maintenance to be carried out periodically based on time interval, quantity or an event. The idea behind this type of maintenance is to ensure unexpected failures that could be costly and time consuming do not occur.   
• Predictive maintenance – maintenance occurs based on sensors foreseeing a potential failure. For example, in a grinding mill a vibration sensor could indicate a potential bearing failure before it catastrophically occurs. Similarly wear sensors in a mill liner could indicate that wear has been less than expected so the liner change can be postponed.   
• Reliability-centred maintenance – this type of maintenance is based on analysing the reliability of equipment, how they fail and how critical to the process they are to determine an optimum tailored maintenance regime based on statistics. Those pieces of equipment most likely to fail and have the highest impact on the process would be maintained more often and more comprehensively.   

In general, wear parts are components that require scheduled replacement due to routine wear and tear because they are coming in direct contact with the ore. Consumables can also affect the performance of the machine. Examples would be crusher and mill liners, screening media and rotor stators. 
 
Spare parts are essential to ensure smooth operation of the machines. They require less regular replacement than wear parts and typically need to be monitored to ensure timely replacement and avoid unplanned downtime. Examples of spare parts would be anything from nuts and bolts, to seals, pinions and shafts.