Has anyone had any first hand experience with the Cat 795 electric drive? At my workplace in Central Queensland, a fleet of these are being assembled at present - the first in the country. Alonside these, also being assembled is a fleet of 797Fs and a new Cat (Bucyrus) electric shovel to load them. The shovel has the hydraulic dipper feed option.
All I can say is......you poor buggers! The 97Fs are nice trucks, and the 95F ACs are going to be a decent truck when they work the bugs out of them. But that shovel.......well, I don't have much good to say about those things.
Wodda ya need to know fella? You won't get any change out of Brian regarding them shovels ha ha ha. Never worked on a 495 and never will me thinks.
You can count your lucky stars on that one Ross.
There is already 795F-AC trucks working in the Hunter Valley, they wouldn,t have a lot of hours on them i would think
Is this another leap in technology from Cat? LeTourneau came out with the electric wheel motor in what year on their loaders? I do understand that AC inverters have virtually dealt a death blow to DC drive from my past in an industrial setting about 25 years ago. I haven't been around them in a mine setting. So what has been Cat's turning point in favor of electric drive, especially on this size truck?
Are these trucks going in at Blackwater, Aussie John? I heard at the start of the year that the 795s coming into Australia might have a Siemens drive system instead of the original Mitsubishi system. Anyone know more? Cat IMO would be making a mistake utilising Siemens as the reliability of the Siemens drives in dump truck applications is damn ordinary in my experience. I haven't worked on a GE AC drive but I do hear pretty good things about it, while the Hitachi drives on the EH 3500 and EH 4000s are very reliable. AC drives using IGBTs are ideal here in Australia, provided the drive is up to scratch of course. Greater speeds up hills loaded than a mechanical truck, less fuel consumption (depending on motor - Cummins QSK motors chew the juice, hence Hitachi are going MTU soon), ease of access for servicing on our trucks is excellent too, a lot easier to access stuff than on, say, a 793.
Do they have diffs? Real trucks have diffs.
The operation I work at have pretty much decided on there equipment strategy. 930E's serving P&H shovels. Fast 3 pass mining. One of the most productive cycles on the planet. L1850's loading 240 coal trucks.
Hell no! :tong
Two words, Rio Tinto.
Or. Ed McCord
The first 795 working in Australia is at MTW (Rio Tinto) in the Hunter Valley, it has been at work a couple of weeks and initial reception is positive. Definately not a Siemens drive, but the Cat (Mitsubishi) system. Another one went to site to day with 10 more to follow. They will be loaded by 4100XPC shovels.
More like Komatsu are dominating the Electric drive market and CAT want a slice. When I was involved with the E drive project here they were aiming for a 40% slice of Komatsu's pie. In the end the two trucks offered got parked and eventually shipped out. That was a 'Pay by the load lease' and still they got parked. They have been dodging the 320 ton market for a decade now as they know the 930E will bury the competition. Will be interesting if they launch 320 ton version. Only 794F left. A 4100XPC will need a 78yrd to 3 pass the 795 unless it's a heavy dig. Then what? It ain't gonna load anything else at full production.
Good move by Cat then. There's a new Hitachi EH 5000 on the way too, a site in Queensland are getting a fleet. Will be a MAJOR upgrade on the old EH 5000 on the basis that the new model will have Hitachi's own drive system instead of the previous POS Siemens. I heard direct from a Siemens tech guru that they were in talks with Cat, but nothing seems to have eventuated. And yes, Komatsu are currently the market leader in electric drive trucks - interesting times ahead.
They have that covered Ross and that is not the model number, use your CWS and you will find it.
Hmmmm, I wonder what colour it will be.........
Ah. I don't have the CWS Access like I use to mate. Just the poverty version.
Barrick Cortez in Nevada did a trial and now has 20something on order. Rio Tinto Kennecott had a trial Im not sure if they have placed an order yet.
hi johon you at Newlands mine? 795 e Hitachi traction motor like /same setup like euclid in rear tube driving back too planterys some as all cat see u some time on sit if so
Hi Oldtom, not at Newlands - at a site further south. Used to work at Newlands though back when it first started up in 1983.
So, what's the guess with the "super ultra class" 450 ton class trucks which have just been announced? Do you think Cat will make their version electric drive, or just boost up the 797F?
I expect the 97 will just get rerated if its only to 450 ton. They haul almost that much in the oilsands as it is. Alco, note I said almost! Lol
Yeah, we kinda try to load 'em to about 450 as it is. I know, I know, there's the 10 10 20 rule, which of course, always gets followed.....but if the scales aren't working, then it's fair game....right?
You betcha!
so are you trying to load them to 450 ton, or 450 tonne?
Going out on a limb and assuming that its Ton, I doubt very much that caterpillar has a metric option for the payload system, if so we never discussed it when whe did commisioning. But like I said I'm assuming and you know what that does!
To switch from Metric to US measurements or vice versa on a VIMS-equipped Cat truck just hit the keys U N (8 6) plus . Easy way to see what units the truck is using at the time is to check if the digital speedometer in the centre of the dash is showing MPH or km/h.
That would be tons, not tonnes. Like Nige mentioned, it's as easy as pushing a few buttons to change the units of measurement, but we run off of imperial measure.
Bit naughty though ........... what's the target, 380, or do you have lightweight bodies on them..?
Oh I knew that, I guess it just never clicked in my brain that it would affect the payload system either. DOH! Been a couple years since I've had to mess with VIMs though!
Nige, the target's 395 with the rubber we run on them. I don't trust the scales no matter what they say. One trip you can have dirt spilling over 3 sides of the box and they only register 320, the next run, they say it's 500, and you only have 2 buckets on them. Or, in most cases, they aren't even working. They don't have to dump in pit until 474, so anywhere between 400 and 450 and management is happy. Truthfully, we try to aim for around 420 or so, but like I said, they can't keep the scales working, so it's all fair game. Honestly, my paycheque doesn't change no matter what's on the truck, so I'll load them however management wants.
Hurts me to say this as a maintenance germ but the Maintenance Dept want shooting ....... on the site where I'm working at the moment we have a maximum measured difference of 3% between the on-board scales and off-board, and usually the difference is around only 1%. Sometimes the system does go tilt (as you commented) but on average it's less than 1% of cycles. I keep a close watch on these numbers believe me - my credibilty rides on it. The payload system is one of the most reliable systems out there and there is no excuse for it not to work - and work reliably and accurately. Years ago (over 10) down in Chile we developed a new procedure for charging suspensions in order to remove a lot of the inaccuracies in the system that we were seeing typically when tyre companies came in to do scale studies. The procedure was adopted and is now published in SIS. It's so simple now to charge a strut a 10-year old kid could do it. On average it takes us about 2 hours to completely discharge (oil + gas) & recharge 4 struts on a truck.
Nige, our "lack of maintenance department" has way bigger issues to deal with than a bunch of frills like scales working or not.....lol. Not all their fault, but I can't go into details on a public forum. Believe me when I say, scales are the least of their concerns right now. And no, the issues have nothing to do with the stresses imposed by overloading.
Leave the loading upto the shovel driver IMO. Some of the 930E's are only using one IGBT per PP due to the tsunami parts shortage so they won't propel if overloaded. Great for the truck. KAL Tire come in with SMS and weigh the trucks loaded and empty, then calibrate the pay loader. This is essential for the Dispatch / Wenco mining system that records every load. Having trouble with tradesman there Brian? Only gonna get worse if Suncor Wins at the Supereme court !
No, that's not the problem Ross. We are short, but that's not what's causing the issues. Also, it would get better for us if Suncor wins, we'd be fully staffed with the folks leaving there....though, who would want people who can't pass random drug tests?
Na what I ment was: Open the flood gates for every company to push this in. They don't call it 'Fort Crack' for nothing ha ha. Trance amounts of anything could be concidered a fail apparently. And no, People who are drunk / Stoned at work not only should be canned, but beaten up on there way out!
Hear, hear. And so say all of us ......... I still remember the old days when as a foreman/supervisor/whatever you could actually take some recalcitrant mechanic behind the workshop and beat the living **** out of him before firing him for pulling a stunt like that. And best of all you'd get an attaboy from the Boss ....
I was doing my sites a couple weeks ago at a mine in Nevada. 18 guys including myself were there, the first thing they did was a drug screen, there were only 2 of us in the safety class. I was shocked! You would think contractors and new hires in Nevada would have some clue....... guess not
Used to have fun with operators over the radio about VIMS, used to toggle the language at shift start and then get them to say exactly what was on the screen when something come up, **** funny sometimes when they tried to explain. Used to crack me up just like when you ask them the hours on a machine and they read out something like 12345.1, amazes me they always do the point 1 or what ever, round enough is good enough.
The hourmeter reading always crack me up as well when they call them in over the radio. As far as I'm concerned rounding the meter reading to the nearest 10 is close enough. We've just activated TKPH Monitor and although the system messages in English make perfect sense the Spanish ones (which our operators use because we're a Spanish-speaking country) are shall we say less than perfect. Must have been the Cuban exiles in Miami who did the translations.
UN (Units - Metric or Imperial) then OK no longer works on the 795F as they now have VIMS Advisor and the process has changed. But on Bone Heads interpretations of VIMS Events:- STRG PRES LO - Strange (not Steering) Haha TRN OUT SP ERR - Turn Out Spelling Error (not Transmission Output Speed Error) And the one where they called up 'System Voltage Low'.......Do you want me to Restart it?
That's a function of the "Text Speak" generation ......... At our operation getting an operator to tell you exactly what was the on-screen message he received (that caused him to call in the radio to report a VIMS Event) is like trying to get blood out of a stone.......