A while back I told you guys I was running shovels now. Well it became official. Here's a few from the night before last, enjoy.
This particular shovel has a 56 yard dipper. Not as big as the ones that were posted from Morenci on another thread. They always get the good stuff and we get whatever is left over. Still, she's a muckin' machine. That truck is a 793B, 265 ton payload.
Awesome!:notworthy Thanks for posting!:drinkup
That is one massive machine, very cool!
Very nice!! I want one for my sandbox!!
what is strapped to side of the dump body on that truck?
Would love to be able to run it ,but the nose bleeds from being that far from terra feirme will render my un-viable.
That is a piece of drisco pipe. It helps deflect spillage. Those tires are around $30K apiece so we try to take good care of them.
that is big. how many hrs does the 4100 have?
WOW Thats impressive !! does one bucket fill the truck ???
I dont have a clue. The guts have been changed out so many times it's kinda like a blonde who can't remember what color her roots are... nobody knows. I do know that it's one of the older model's, I'm thinking around 1998 or so. Last year the boom split in half so they put on a "new" one.
Naw, it takes three full dippers with this shovel. At some of the other mines in the area they swing a 70 yard dipper, I said this one was 56 yards but it's actually 54 so we have to work a little harder.
Great pics Eric.. Looks like fun:drinkup
I guess the pictures fooled me looked like an empty truck with bucket above and then the next pic the bucket emptying and truck looks full. Great pictures thanks for the info.
Man, that is really cool! Keep the pics coming! If I stop by can I try it out? :lmao
Looks great Eric, I hope to have the same job some day. But for now, I'm stuck staring at the shovels from up above them, or down on the clean up machine. I know how you feel about getting the left over stuff. Our other mine is the company's spoiled child. They get whatever they want, including our new equipment, and we get what they don't want anymore. Brian
Thanks Brian. What do you do in your mine?? What minerals are you mining?? I'm always curious to know what other operations are like.
At the Mine I'm at, there is a Bucyrus 495. Same size and pass as yours. When I was driving truck I hated the shovel haul, you guys loaded me too fast! That looks like a nice machine Congrats.
The scale of the equipment you guys are running today makes me feel like an old fighter pilot of the biplane era looking at a fleet of B-1 Bombers! During my own era at Chino Mines at Santa Rita, NM (1976-85), our biggest shovels were the 15 Cu. Yd. P&H's and one 17 Yd. B&E. (Our biggest trucks were 165 ton Euclids, and we still had the 150, 100, 90, and 85 ton Unit Rigs in the fleet.) I can recall sitting in the old Field Office (ie. dispatch control tower) on graveyard shift, and listening respectfully to the wise old veteran Mining Foremen agreeing with each other over stale black coffee that there was really no point in anything bigger than a 10 Cu. Yd. shovel in that mine.
I'm a support equipment operator, mostly dozer and hoe, but pretty much everything else at some point. For example, these day shifts, I was loaned out to the road crew. Today I was on a tiny little D6R filling holes in a road with gravel brought in by 50 tonners. I guess they decided that production wasn't an issue...lol. As for what we mine, it's black gold! I'm in an oil sand mine. Brian
Nice pics, it's really awesome! By the way, is this Powered by engine or electronic? How much is the horsepower?
It's powered by electricity, 7200 volts. As for hoist, crowd, swing, and propel power... I don't know. A whole bunch!
Wow man that is a big beast. Next week we get our brand new Hitachi ex3600 not quit as big but it is mine on night shift. I will start a thread when it starts coming in on 18 truck loads.
Real nice pictures of the 4100. What are you mining?
We mine copper. There are 3 copper mines in our county. Currently 2 of those are shut down, they just have skeleton crews maintaining mine de-watering and exercising equipment. The mine I work at is the only one still running and we are at about 75%.
Are you in the Douglas area. i had heard that they were stripping the tailings from the old mines there to get the remaining copper out. I guess as soon as the price goes up you will be in full production again.
No, I'm in Silver City N.M. I've been to Douglas and all over that area, lots of mines in S.E. Arizona. One of our mines in the area had been hauling tailings into the mine, dumping the tailings onto the shot muck,and then hauling it to the leach stockpile where it becomes mixed with the leach material, then leached and recovered. Pretty efficient way to recover old copper and clean up tailings at the same time. I saw a program on Discovery Channel about the oil sand mining, when I watched it they were running 797 Cat trucks and watching those big trucks roll through the mine squishing out the haul roads. I thought to myself that maintaining those roads would be a wooley booger. Our roads take alot of work to maintain and berms and so on. With the soft material you work with it must be a frustrating job trying to maintain pits and roads. Job security I guess.
great pics eric were do i sign up !!
Roughly 3000 miles south!
Well, I am now one step closer to being in your shoes. I got the word today that I am now a backup oiler. Basically, our oilers are the ground crew for the shovels as well as the relief operators. So I start training next cycle. Brian
Thanks for the pics,Eric. My little Mitsubishi dozer could clean out between the teeth...toothpick style! I note the Cat dozer has long ripper tynes....is it used primarily for ripping? Jim
Hey Congratulations Brian! I hope that it all goes well.
We do alot of ripping and re-laying shovel pits. Most our dozers are pulling 3 shanks.
Here is a stupid question! Ive seen lots of pics of these big shovels and i always see a dozer kicking around also. what is the job of the dozer? clean up after the trucks leave??
Bullboy, The mine I work at is located in southwest New Mexico. The trucks we run are 793 C's and D's. We aim for 265 tons per load. Danial, we keep dozers in the shovel pits to rip and relay the pit floors to make sure we are on grade. It's not always easy to cut grade with a shovel, so we let the dozers take care of that for us. We have little 824 rubber tire dozers that normally take care of overcast and spills.
Nice pictures!
For what?? P&H Mine pro takes care of the shovel parts.
Nice photos. I have a house in Columbus NM and would really love to see those machines working some day. I was looking at the Tyrone Mine (your mine I assume) on Google earth and you can see the 4100's working. Big even from space. Thanks
Great pictures
I took some friends on a tour yesterday. Here's a few to see if I can remember how to post a picture.
That is pretty cool Eric. You don't see those big machines in this neck of the woods everyday.
The funny thing is, that those shovels are made in Milwaukee!:usa
Yeah that is true. They are made in West Milwaukee only about 50 miles from my house. Bucyrus are made in South Milwaukee and Milwaukee. Two years ago I helped put in water and sewer lines at the Bucyrus's South Milwaukee plant. It is a very cool place.
Is that a DM-M3?
I don't follow. The drill? The drill's an Atlas Copco Pit Viper.
I want one! :woohoo
Atlas Copco’s DM-M3 blasthole drill is in the same class as the larger Pit Viper’s, just smaller than the PV-351. If the pictured drill had have been a DM-M3, the dual rear jacks raised a question for me. But since it’s not, disregard.
Atlas Copco bought out Ingersol Rand a couple of years ago I guess. When they were IR drills, they were all labeled with a DM series number. We had a bigger IR drill, DM something or another...(lol...sorry, not a driller) then a couple of years ago after the conversion, we bought the same exact drill but AC. The only difference was the color and the name on the side.
Hey Eric, How are those electric shovels for operating? The biggest shovel we have at our mine is a Hitachi 5500 with a 40 yard scoop. We have a couple of Hitachi 3600's that are all hydraulic, which I get along with just fine, but this 5500 is electric over hydraulic. There's no embilical cord, but the controls are very touchy. There's a split second deley from the time you react or stop to the time the machine follows your command. That, and the sticks look like they robbed from old Atari video game paddles and have no feelable backpressure to your hand movement. When used to hydraulic linkage, this machine tends to throw your coordination all out of wack..lol. It keeps you on your toes for sure.
It's amazing how sensitive the controls are on the shovel, and FAST. I much prefer the electric rope shovels to the hydraulic 5230 we have. I haven't run an electric over hydraulic so I couldn't say on that. I do know that P&H shovels run different from BE shovels. I can't remember which is which but one runs AC motors and one runs DC. That's what I've been told. I have only run P&H so I can't compare, but we have some older shovelrunners that say the BE shovels have a "lag" similar to what you are talking about.
The BI shovels are AC drive now, and most P&H are still DC, although, you can get AC P&H machines now. We're getting a new AC 4100 later this year. The BI machines do have a lag to them in the controls, and they are rough as hell on the operator.
Are the machines you're referencing equipped with Hydracrowd?
No, the machines we have are all rope crowd. Pretty durable though, they broke the center pin on one of them this afternoon. Pure junk! 4 years old and this is the second center pin they have snapped.
Alco, how many 495's do you run there? You'd think it would cost less to be rid of them than dealing with all the downtime.
We have 4 495HFs. As much as we figure it would be better to do what you mention, the management doesn't seem to see it the same way. Oh well....lol.
Yeah, that looks like FUN!
i am a engineer mainly repair the heavy machine want look for some book about shovel thanks your pic
I made it out to your mine last week Eric- that's a very impressive operation! Here's some pictures I took from the outside of the mine if anybody cares to see them. I'm pretty sure the last one is a 793 dumping.
Have you had many problems with the saddle blocks on your shovel Eric?
Thas is a cool machine, any idea of what size of hoist ropes it uses?
So that's really how the Grand Canyon was formed, huh, I never knew. Found a vein of something and just kept on a following it. Now somebody can invent a Cat D-huge *ss dozer, make 'er flat and put some condos up.