Mining conditions both in open cast and underground are tough.  And things only get tougher when managing hydraulic inefficiencies cause you long periods of downtime and expose you to potential liability. One of the most visible instances of hydraulic inefficiency is the hydraulic hoses powering the various mining equipment.

In a typical surface mining operation the unscheduled downtime due to hose can reach up to 37 per cent of the entire unscheduled downtime for a prime mover hydraulic shovel.

The service life of a hydraulic hose is finite and usually quite difficult to estimate, as the service life depends on variety of factors –operating conditions, duty cycles which vary widely in different sites. Hence every mine manager has asked the question how to improve the reliability of the miming equipment and avoid unplanned down time.

The Reliability Based Hose Management Service (RHMS), introduced by Gates, is a revolutionary service that increases safety in the handling of hydraulics at a mining site, increases mining fleet availability and reduces operating cost. This Service is being applied in mines around the world making a field proven Service that produces measurable results and effectively manages all hydraulic assemblies at your mine sites for an immediate return on investment.

Key components of the Hose Management Program RHMS:
• Key performance indicators to be determined at the beginning of the implementation of the program.
• High performance products that will enable a significant reduction in undesired outcomes.
• Product application engineering analysis that will optimize hydraulic systems.
• Hose assembly tagging and tracking to track the lifecycle of every hose assembly.
• Internal condition monitoring and engineering analysis of selected hydraulic circuit.
• External condition monitoring of hose assembly conditions.
• Risk analysis based on hose assembly function and location on a given piece of equipment.
• Reliability based replacement alerts based on condition monitoring objectives.

By applying some or all of the components of the Reliability Based Hose Management program as described above, it has been possible to produce the following results at several different types of mining operations  both open cast and underground mining in a variety of equipment – drilling jumbo, shovels, dumpers, continuous miners etc.

According to Gates, the results have ranged from MTBF increasing 300 per cent in  drill jumbo (and still counting), 40 per cent longer life  in shovel boom,  30 per cent  reduction in annual hose assembly spend  in a surface mine.

The safe, efficient hydraulic hose systems from Gates are backed by strong preventive maintenance programs. RHMS provides a robust platform to implement this.

To complement the hose management program, Gates offers a “Safe Hydraulics Program” to create hose safety awareness and identify troublesome hose applications that need to be corrected.

For more details, contact Gates at customer.care@gates.com  or visit http://ww2.