I thought I'd start a new thread for this. Our new fleet of Cat 789D trucks. We have 15 coming over the next 3 months. First to arrive - the bodies, well 5 of them anyway. 15 flat decks needed to haul them up from the port. We're building them in our new Truck Shop despite the fact it's not completely finished yet. The last lot we built out in the open. Check out the armed motorcycle cops doing escort duty .......... Getting them through some of the villages between the main highway and the mine is a challenge.........
That is really cool. Thanks for sharing.
Does Caterpillar put them together for the mine on site for Quality Control purposes? I can see where the mine would be capable of doing it on their own, but I'd think Cat would do it for warranty and customer satisfaction.
I wouldn't let the local dealer near them as regards assembly TBH. They did our very first machines back in 2008 and made a not-very-good job of them. Sloppy work and took far too long. Since them we have done them ourselves at less than half the price the dealer charged us for the first lot. The dealer tech rep comes to site and a joint team from both customer & dealer do the commissioning together at which point we both sign off on them from Cat & customer standpoint. Assembly quality is far better and we get the job done faster. I may have failed to mention that I worked for Cat dealers for 20+ years before I came here and have probably assembled in excess of 200 large mining trucks in that time, that's about 194 more than the dealer here has ever assembled............
You may not be aware that paying approx. $3 million per truck doesn't get you a fully assembled truck, just the component parts. The customer then has to pay extra to have it put together on site, which is rubbing salt into the wound a bit IMHO. Another thought - the best way to train mechanics is to have them build the equipment.
Pretty neat! Did they have to take down any power lines? The one picture looks like it would be a helluva headache. I would imagine you guys are sticking with hydraulic shovels down there, hows the build on those?
Yeah, that's what I was asking; I figured Cat would only sell it fully assembled on their terms no matter what the mine's credentials were. Seems like you could do a Cat Certified Rebuild then from what you're saying on your existing equipment(789 trucks only). Just get the dealer tech rep on your site to bless it with a new serial number after inspection along the way to finished product. What about you guys doing your own Certified Rebuilds on your graders, loaders, etc.? Or is Cat letting you finish the build on the new trucks because you've done it specifically in the past?
that trailer dosent look very happy with that load on it. Be sure to take some assembly pics, always fun to see big iron going together.
No power lines were harmed in the making of this epic ............. well no legal connections anyway. The problem here is people connecting illegally and those connections tend to be smaller and hang lower than the legal ones. We have a bucket truck accompany a convoy like that to make sure all the major lines get lifted if necessary. Each high load has a "pole guy" as shown in this photo to lift the smaller lines up out of the way. I'll find some photos of our Hitachi shovel assembly & post them. I think I have the process all the way from coming off the ship to fully assembled Don, believe it or not the only condition from the factory is that if you want their warranty on a new machine the dealer has to commission it. They don't care who builds it. I'd love to be in a position to do Certified Rebuilds but despite that impressive shop in the photos above we really don't have the facilities. Dualie. Believe it or not the load on that trailer is only 17 tons total. The centre section weighs a bit over 13, the canopy just over 3. It's the size that makes it awkward.
Neat pics Nige, thanks for posting. The guy with the pole reminds me of my time in Costa Rica watching the rice combines come through town. There would be 1-2 guys with forked sticks sitting on top of the combine to raise the wires up. Things are just done differently in less "developed" countries... I was at the local Cat dealer the other day and the parts manager showed us the web cam from one of the local coal mines where they are putting together 797's, I think there are 15 total. The dealer has a satellite yard in the mine to put the trucks together. Quite amazing, I would like to see it in person.
I tried to convince the transporters to simply string a couple of maybe 15-20ft sections of something like 2" dia. plastic pipe over the load in a front-to-rear fashion with a rope through the centre of each one. When you pull the rope tight the pipe assumes a bow shape that is ideal to act as a catcher for low overhead cables. The cable comes into contact with the pipes, slides up them, over the top of the load, and down the other side again - untouched by human hand ................ I'll have another bash at that idea with the next group of bodies.
Note the age of the motorcycle the cop is riding.Gotta be early '80's at the newest, with those drum brakes. Hey Nige, how about including a few photo's of the tires being mounted and hung for the old tireman? Until I'm in a position to do it myself again, a few pics(or even video?) will due to scratch my itch.Thanks.
At mines like this, how much of the personell is local and how much is recruited abroad from europe and north america? Always seems like all the management isn't local?
It looks like Haiti, am I close?
It's probably no more than a year old & Chinese if my guess is correct. Millions of those things kicking around the streets here. Per, we have 10 expats in the Maintenance Department and about 300 locals. Reason there is no local management is simple, there is no history of large-scale mining in this country prior to this project opening, so no relevant skills available. Just to give you an idea, we skills-tested both theory & practical (Google "recognition for prior learning" or RPL Test) over 500 applicants who claimed they were "heavy equipment mechanics". Out of that number no more than 50 scored highly enough to warrant bringing in for interview. Of those we hired just over half ............ so less than 30 out of 500. Tell you something..? Mark - you're close enough. Next door country actually. Haiti is just on the point of opening up because the same range of hills stretches from the DR right over the border into Haiti and contains similar mineralization. It begs the question though as to who would have the cojones to invest billions of dollars in a country that right now does not have a functional government outside the capital.
You beat me to it. The Chinese produce these "mopeds" for the third world market, there not much in North American or European standards but sure as hell beats the bicycle which is their alternative. Central America is full of them as well. Ride through town on a BMW and you instantly become a rock star. What does the mine produce? I would assume all the material is exported due to the small economy on the island? There are two places in my life's travels that I got deathly sick, Kenya and the Dominican Republic - OK not really deathly but felt like I wanted to die .
Good thoughts with the PVC pipes thats they way its been done for years. Im amazed they haven't figured it out the world over?
Now it gets exciting ............. over she goes.
By this time my heart was back to beating at normal speed ............. it was kind of exciting for a while. This was Monday.
Yesterday the 2nd one went over (LH photo). Today the headache rack went on the first one (RH photo). The internal welding on the centre seams on the 1st one are almost completed already and tomorrow I hope the liner plates will go in the floor and fingers crossed by the weekend it should be ready for painting. Then we get the parts of another one into the shop and do the same thing all over again .............
Every time i flip a piece with any sort of weight on the overhead it always puckers my bottom side. I see the rod oven are you guys stick welding all these beds out? Is there a reason that your not using wire feeders with either dual shield or self shielded FCAW? I take it the beds are full pen welded at the seams, flipped over back ground and welded out?
That bed weighs 68,000 pounds in the condition that we flip it. Let's say it cleared the dust off the overhead crane when it went over and leave it at that .......... it's awful difficult to sling so that it wants to go over but doesn't go over too hard if you get my drift. The only other option apart from the 2 lifting points in the sidewalls where you can see the rigging attached are 2 on the outside underneath the body (you can see the tagline attached to one of them in the photo above) and if you sling it there it doesn't even want to go as far as vertical - so you need 2 cranes to flip it. Unfortunately I have but one (big) hook on that overhead so a bit of banging & crashing is the order of the day. The body will go about 83,000 pounds when it's fully completed & fitted with all the wear liner plates. Rod oven's for stick welding around the canopy and a bit of other odds & sods like around the ribs when the body is initially assembled. Everything else is V-groove done with wire feeders. Currently I have 6 feeders running, 3 on each bed. All major welds are 60-deg v-groove and accessible from one side only with a 1/4" backup strip on the other that is 100% welded to the structure as opposed to just being tacked in position, so you can't back gouge and then cap with one last pass on the back side. If I think on I'll take some photos of some of the parts before assembly and post them - you'll see better what I mean. Assembly sequence is as follows: - 1. Turn the centre section upside down and marry the 2 sidewall sections to it. They are a type of "tongue & groove" fit. 2. Fully weld the joints (ribs) between the centre section & the sidewalls underneath the body (but on top because the body is inverted) and also the 2 vertical seams up the front wall between the centre section & the sidewall sections. 3. Flip the body over. Weld the 2 lengthwise seams in the floor between the centre section and each of the sidewall sections. Weld the 2 vertical seams up the front wall. 4. Install & weld the headache rack. 5. Install & weld the wear liner plates in the floor. 6. Clean, paint externally, apply numbers.
Wow great thread Nige, pretty awesome
Nice pics Nige. I was drilling holes on the side of a mountain on a hwy project in North Carolina, from my perch I watched local Cat dealer assemble about ten 785 trucks and a 5230 shovel. 785 beds came split in half, had to be welded together on site. And there was a pile of oil drums that went into that 5230. It was a beehive of activity.
Great assembly project. Just thinking on your flipping the dump beds and the "flip" when it comes over center. I know you don't have a second crane or hook to tail it with, but I think you could "tail" or brake it before it comes over. I think you could use your other sidewall two inner bed lifting lugs, and run rigging out the opposite side of where your picking at on the bed. You could attach those lines to a winch truck/big loader (it looks like you don't have a shortage of big iron) and use it to apply backward tension/tail on the bed. Pick the bed like you were, but use the loader to stop/ anchor it before the bed breaks over and continue with the overhead to raise the bed off the floor. Then simply back off (slowly) with the loader/ winch truck, until it hangs freely from your upper hook. The biggest danger would be avoiding too much side loading of the overhead, and making sure you have enough loader to anchor the bed. I wouldn't try to lift it with the loader, just use it as a moveable tie down point. (Of course- I could be wrong on all this-ask my wife if you need confirmation material)
Thanks for the suggestions. My big problem is the concrete wall in between the 2 bays where we're building the beds. That kinda stops getting other gear in there because the rest of the shop hasn't been handed over by the construction germs yet. Actually we flipped the 2nd one by rigging it from the 2 lifting eyes underneath the bed instead of inside the bed like the 1st one. That's the one in the photo above where you see the tagline attached to + the one at the front end on the same plane. Even though the body does not quite go vertical in this configuration we put 18" of cribbing under the outside edge of the sidewall with the bed in the air and then slowly lowered the bed down while at the same time travelling the crane along the track. That was enough to persuade the body to go over far enough until gravity took over. It also had the advantage of maintaining constant tension on the rigging all the time. Much better for my heart rate also. Next one we do one I'll post some pictures, but it's difficult to run the crane and use a camera at the same time ......... The big issue with that overhead for me is that although it has a 2-speed hoist and the 1st speed is perfect for aligning parts, etc because it's super-slow the 2nd (fast) hoist speed on 8 parts of line is nowhere near fast enough for what is needed to "snatch" a load from the "balance point" just before it tips to hanging free in the air without banging & crashing in between the 2 scenarios.
Haiti has enourmas mineral wealth .I have heard some crazy story's from privet pilots. But no country in the world is as old west as Haiti. Last time I was there I even got cought in a gun fight between the good guys and the bad guys.
great thread Nige, thanks
I will be updating with more pictures but today has been a bit hectic (understatement of the year). We had 4 chassis & all their ancilliary parts rocked up together - 16 trucks all told, 4 lowboys & 12 flatbeds. Trying to offload them in between lightning storms was, well, trying ..............
Do you have to unload them all with your overhead crane, or do you have a lay down yard somewhere nearby? Weather never cooperates, it only complicates.
They are programmed to arrive 5 at a time. Fortunately the dump bodies are shipped separately to the chassis but even so 5 bodies is 15 loads, 5 chassis is 20 loads, although with the chassis only 2 loads require a crane, the rest is unloaded with a lift truck. We try to work on 3 bodies (2 being assembled, 1 being painted) and 2 chassis in the workshop. So they all get handled by the overhead. The rest get stored outside in a laydown yard a couple of hundred yards away, so when we need them we have to bring in a mobile crane to load the parts in the yard then they get unloaded by the overhead in the shop. As thunderstoms are violent in this part of the world we are not allowed to work outside whenever our lightning detector system (that's installed all round the perimeter of the property) detects a strike within 5 miles. We have been known to be under continuous lightning alert for 8 hours or more some days in summer. This time of year the best time to work outside is the early morning before the thunderheads build up. Of course inside the shop we are not affected by storms, it's just that you can't step outside.
Answering people's questions from earlier. Can't remember who asked but here are the photos as promised. Wire feeders ............ Pics of the joint between the centre sections and the sides. You can clearly see the backup strips .............
Another sequence showing how the 3 main parts of the dump body go together ......
Now things start to get interesting ..... the first chassis comes off ...... as you can see we set the rear axle on the ground first then position the chassis over it. Then after cribbing the chassis to the correct height it's a simple matter to lift the rear axle up into position. These 2 were taken 2 hours later .......
These 2 were taken the following day .........
Painting of the first body completed ............ then we pulled it outside and parked it on the trailer to make room for the next one. The second one for paint was a bit complicated because there isn't enough height to lift it over the wall between the welding bay and the rest of the shop. So it has to be loaded on to a trailer, get pulled outside and then reversed back in 2 bays down. You can see the 1st one parked outside on the trailer.
In she goes ............ on the right-hand side of the last photo is the 2nd chassis in the shop that was offloaded yesterday morning. Rear axle not installed on that one yet.
Off the truck and on to the ground ready for paint ................ at this point I opined it was Miller Time and left the boys to it ....!!
it is only when you see these massive trucks in a normal environment that you realise just how big these behemoths are. ,,,,,,,,, enormous does not even cover it!Thanks for the update
Very curious how your crew gets more efficient. As you said earlier you have some very green help.
This crew has done 11 x 789C's plus a 994F, a couple of D10T's already so they are not totally green regarding assembly. Also they know how I like to work with everything done in an ordered and structured form, and keeping the workplace tidy at the same time. It's taking us a while to learn the quirks of assembling a 789D. Even I hadn't seen one before. Also the crew are enjoying working inside the new shop out of the sun and the rain, that helps. Bit of a setback late yesterday afternoon, one of the crane functions failed. Hopefully the electricians can get it sorted before Monday or there will need to be a rapid creation of a "Plan B".
Nice work there Nige! Thanks for sharing.
Keep the pictures and descriptions comming. Hal
I see Loma Is moveing those beds around for you. One of there yards is in my area and some of the crains they own are very impressive. I see in your pictures that you move those beds around without tieing them down.Now i'm sure you know what your doing but if it were me I would have a few straps or chains on it just for piece of mind. But then I'm also the one that would endup haveing to figure out how to pick that thing up and put it on the trailer. That bastered murphy gets me every time.
Trucks were rented from Lomma a long time ago when construction started at the project. Now they belong to us - we paid so much in rental for them we told Lomma they are now ours ...!!! I would normally agree with you about tying the beds down, however: - 1. We are moving them about 50 yards in total, out of one bay and back into another on a solid flat concrete floor. The simple reason we move them like this is because the crane doesn't have enough height to get a complete bed over the concrete wall between the Welding Bay & the rest of the shop. 2. If we chained one to the trailer and it went over it's going to take the truck & trailer with it. They weigh 86,000 pounds and I'd far rather have to pick up a bed off the floor than have to deal with an overturned tractor-trailer to be honest. Really & truthfully I don't like the idea much of moving them on those trailers because they are so high and the bed is so wide compared to the trailer, but I always battle to get a lowboy, so I basically have to make use of what's available to me at the time. However in 30 days or so I will have 2 roll trailers to move them on. See photo below. Basically a 40ft long, 70-ton capacity flat deck trailer with no brakes, solid rubber wheels, and a bolt-on gooseneck at the front. These are so low I can put a bed on one and leave it on there while the welders repair it.
I know what you mean about working eith what you got. Dad's favorite saying is " It is what it is, make it work".
These are pretty nice. Thanks for sharing:tong
Hi Nige, I'm working for a company in the Pilbara in Aus, which has also recently taken delivery of a fleet of 789D's, was wondering if you have had any issues with Brake overstrokes on your's, we have seen an increasing number on our site and the local dealer is taking it's time to work it out, so any advice would be well recieved, thanks DB
Brake overstrokes on new trucks are simple. Find which master cylinder has overstroked by checking the indicator pin underneath the master cylinder (you have to do that to reset the overstroke alarm), there is 1 cylinder for the front brakes & 2 for the rear. Generally it is only either the front circuit or the rear that will be affected, seldom both. Then - bleed the brakes PROPERLY ...... bleed them until no air comes out, then bleed them some more . That'll fix it. I think we have had issues on 2 trucks out of the 15 that the local dealer built for us, and that's 2 more than I would have liked - none out of the trucks we built ourselves. Not one of the trucks we built ourselves had isses and I like to think it's because I'm anal about bleeding brakes correctly before putting the truck to work in the first place.
It's a bit disturbing how often people forget to bleed or pump out the brakes after repairs have been made, you don't want to back a haul truck out of the shop and find out the pedal hits the floor the first time you try to brake.
Or backing to the edge of a high waste dump
Thanks Nige, got one of my guy's to go through the bleeding process with the dealer guy's and looks like they were not following the full process - Not purgeing the ARC system, and when done, found some more air in the system. In the process of doing this to the few reoffending trucks and will see how that goes. Cheers DB
We ran into issues on 797s where the techs weren't making sure the accumulators were fully bled, they skipped a few steps as well and that led to some hairy situations. You can't mess around with brakes!
I prefer Power Bleeding. Use PB oil from the AETA to the test nipple on the Slack Adjuster. open the Bleeder till you get fresh,clean oil. (Also you then don't have to reset the O/S switch). If you have replaced a roto you will still have to do it at the middle. If the Bleeding is not successful pull the WET end off the Roto and there is a slug on the end of the Rod inside the piston. This will have a 6 mm green seal that cuts. This prevents the circuit from filling and allows a O/S.
We are also finding issues where if the operator rapidly pumps the Service Brake pedal (say 5 times in a space of 10-15 seconds) the truck can generate an overstroke alarm simply becuase the rotochambers can't recover fast enough. This came up yesterday on a VIMS snapshot. Apart from bleeding the brakes again I'm going to have our Senior Operator Training guy visit with the operators again about use of service brakes.
Cool thread Nige....don't know how I missed it for so long.
If I get 5 mnutes I'll have to post some more pictures. We're assembling 2 more trucks at the minute and I have just been told we have 25 more to come over the next 2 years .......!! That will take us to 59 trucks, originally the final fleet size was 32.
Digging those new toys. Gotta love it. ~Dig First ask Questions Later Dixie Chopper Bowling Green
What are they loading with Nige? And what are they mining? I can't remember.
Great thread. Be interested in any more pics and details.
Whoops, double post
Great thread Nige and interesting to hear your comments as always. It,s amazing what you can do in another part of the world, i worked for an international gold miner in Australia and would have been run off site to even suggest rolling dump bodies like that, we actually had some used DS bodies that turned out to be thin on the sides where that std Cat lifting lug is and they would not let us use the assembly lugs (which were the same size) on the underside of the body as the slings then had to pass 90 degrees, held a trucky up for 2 days untill i crafted an email!! Mind you the day i saw an email come through with an attachement titled "procedure to right a procedure" that explained it all, what a pack of idiots!
Loading with Hitachi EX3600 & Cat 994F, that's why 789s were picked. Product is gold/silver/copper.
Gav, the thing is that if you lift the body using the 2 lugs underneath the side section (a change from what the photos on Page 2 show) it won't quite go vertical enough to roll over. What we've evolved as a procedure is to lift the body clear of the ground using those lugs so it's almost vertical then place about 40cm (8") of cribbing at 2 points under the sidewall - basically under the same places as the holes either side of the load placement arrow are located. As you let the body down slowly on to the cribbing it naturally tends to roll over and lands flat on its back. We then grab it with 4 legs using the lugs in the floor and put it where we want it in the shop. With the overhead crane it's quite simple really.
This is my first time seeing this thread...I love finding these. Great pics and commentary Nige. I'm wondering about the rack of hose reels I see in your pictures. Are those all air, fluids and grease? I can't imagine filling some of the tanks on those machines. It'd be like filling a swimming pool.
Thanks Nige, you'd think they would have gone a bit bigger for the shovels, like a 5500.
Some gold outfits will use slightly less of a hyd than is optimum for the given truck, usually to do with the orebody and having to be a little more selective in the dig following a vein of ore etc. Truck utilisation may not look fantastic sometimes but it saves on the amount you have to have if just slightly larger along with having less operators etc. The show i was at ran 9350 Liebherr with 789C and it was a 6-7 pass match. For all out hogging of dirt a hyd weighing twice what the truck can carry is a great starting point for match up, and slightly larger leverages even more efficiences in most cases.
Gav's right. All our open pit operations are basically controlled by the Geology Dept who tell the miners where to dig and how deep to go. All the prime loading tools have GPS on the buckets to give accurate location information. Full plant throughput only requires around 20,000 tonnes of ore per day but it has to be blended from many different sources in the mine to give the alchemists what they need.
The EX 3600-6 is a fine machine, backhoe or shovel config? At work here they're getting rid of the 3600 shovel, even though if they used it properly, it'd be one of the most productive diggers on site.
We have one of each. Sorry, my experience is they're a POS. I'd drench 'em in diesel and burn the barstewards to the ground just to collect the insurance money if they were mine. ...... there are much better hydraulics around than Hitachi IMHO. When they were bought the mine was given no choice in what brand was purchased, which I think is wrong because everyone's particular circumstances are different, especially when it comes to the service provided by the local dealer who can range from tremendous to terrible.
I'll agree to disagree then, we have 3 3600s now that the shovel is off hire and they give minimal trouble and pump out good numbers. Not too bad to work on either, well set up for maintenance for the most part. Certainly easier to access that say, a Liebherr. I have no experience with Cat's repaint job on the old O&K so I won't comment on them.
The experience that has led to my comments 2 posts above has a lot to do with a combination of our geographic location and the support (or lack of it) we get from the local dealer. Hitachi factory support is completely non-existent and has been that way ever since the 2 machines arrived on site.
Thanks Nige, I fully understand the use of a smaller machine for more selective digging. I just thought it may be more practical to use a smaller truck, like a 785, to match. It's too bad you aren't getting any support from Hitachi. When they are maintained and supported, they are one hell of a good machine. Though, the 3600s here have been somewhat fickle. Pretty much all of the contractors run large fleets of Hitachis here......with a few minor exceptions of course.
As I'm on night shift this week and had a few minutes spare I thought I'd add a couple of pics to the thread. Our new D10T & 2 x 854K Dozers.
oooo shinny
Not for long - I'll guarantee that ........!!
I can remember when 834's were large
The 854 is a D11 on wheels. I love them.
Yair . . . Nige what is the application for the wheel dozers? Cheers.
And then some! We had a 797 come to the shop on a float one day, victim of front strut removal via bad ballstud. They yard was frozen solid and the tractor couldn't get the trailer up a slight grade to the unloading point. So they hooked up an 11 with ice lugged tracks and it wouldn't do a thing. Hooked up an 854 instead and walked that 97 up that grade and nary supn a wheel, I was mighty impressed.
854G will push a D11R backwards on Concrete without raising a sweat. Now we need a 864K......?? To keep up with Ultra Class.
in a word, mobility. Each of our 854s is assigned the cleanup work for 2 waste dumps + 1 shovel. No tracked machine would be able to do that because of the distances involved and no wheeled machine with a blade smaller than the 854 would be able to move the volumes of material involved in the time available.
Question Nige, with as many as you have assembled, why not do the entire bed in house and only ship over the rest of the machine to mount your bed on, you have plenty of experience and the shop to do it, that would save having to weld them together and assemble them yourself, just build them from scratch so to speak. And I also wanted to say, love the pictures of the assembly process, some of the rest of us would like to have a shop equipped like yours.
Next Minexpo = D12T & E, 864K, 20M & 996K wheel loader.........in my dreams!! Certainly the base machine is now there in the 993K to produce an 864 so who knows, customer demand will be the thing that gets it over the line, probably happen way before a D12 due to the fact the base machine is already there in the 993.
In reality our welding shop is a mine repair shop, not a fabrication shop. Even when we assemble beds we bring in contractor welders to do it, or mix'n'match our welders with a contractor's manpower. In truth we don't have the manpower to assemble outside-fabbed beds without hiring in more bodies so fabbing from scratch would require far more resources in addition to those we already haven't got.
Yair . . . Thanks for reply Nige . . . it sure is hard to imagine a wheel machine out pulling a D11! Way back I did a few shifts on a Le Torneau and later on a big (at the time) Hough . . . it had a V12 Cummins, I think around 700 HP. I was not impressed with either and did not think the concept would ever progress to the machines you have today. The Hough was pushing material to a dredge at a rutile mine and the first radiator lasted about 150 hours due to the back wheels carrying sand up to airstream on the suction side of the fan. Cheers.
Ive see haul trucks out pull d11s a few times. When we had the our 1570 go over we couldn't budge it with 4 D11s but 4 Komatsu 830s did the trick. It was embarrassing as hell too as I was the one that said "If those D11s wont do it the trucks dont have a chance in hell"
The trucks weigh more and have more power, on good ground I can't see why they wouldn't pull more.