Cooee, Tasmania-based Jayben Australia says its innovative S60 Scaler has recently completed its first week of a second round of field trials with mine partner Grange Resources at the Savage River iron ore mine in northwest Tasmania. The company says the trials are already showing that the machine has demonstrated excellent suitability for mine wall maintenance. The design uses a tilt rotator which reverses the bucket to enable loose material to be shovelled away from the base of the wall. The whole S60 Scaler is effectively a remote controlled excavator that can operate vertically on the side of a mine wall or bench with operation utilising an augmented reality vision system from a self contained command station.
Jayben Australia is an integrated engineering and manufacturing company founded in 1927 specialising in off highway power train and agricultural power take off products. Jayben General Manager Chris Johnson has stated that the innovative mining industry machine was designed to cut away rocks that were at risk of collapsing as ore was extracted, a job usually done in mines by men abseiling down the wall on a rope. While mines do a lot of safety assessments to ensure it’s safe to do this it is still an inherently dangerous activity. The S60 Scaler being remote-controlled doesn’t require anyone to go into that unsafe area. Bob Calvert, Project Leader – Marketing for the Jayben S60 comments: “The open-cut mining industry will be the significant benefactor of such technology, removing the human element from high wall face maintenance as well as the ability to remediate benches of fallen spall.”
The manufacture of the S60 was first made possible by a A$430,000 grant Jayben received from the Federal Government’s Regional Jobs and Investment Package. The grant allowed Jayben to expand its workshops to accommodate a machine the size of the S60, upgrade its equipment and employ more staff. This has included investment in improved tooling and equipment to allow the plant to maximise operational capacity and reduce ongoing costs. Expanding the existing facility has also created room for multiple simultaneous production lines, along with an investment in electronic and sensor technologies.
The S60 Scaler has a nominal 18 t weight with an engine having gross power of 49.7 kW operating two 160 kN capcity winches.The machine also has hydraulic stabiliser legs with vertical pivot for rapid repositioning. The stick reach is 7.5 m horizontal and 5.8 m above track base (4.1 m below track base). The slew system offers 360 rotation using three slew motors. Rock protection is provided by steel plate and composite panelling. The vision system uses an advanced augmented reality (AR) user interface for primary vision, fed from a 3D camera with six secondary 2D camera for 360 degree situational awareness as well as a 3D depth sensing camera. A Stinger™ deployment retrieval system is designed specific to the mine supplied anchor machine whether dozer or loader which is hydraulic actuated with dual 240 kN winch recovery redundancy system. The command station can be standalone or trailer mounted and is air conditioned with its own genset power source. It uses an advanced Line of Sight remote system. The standard S60 attachments work with a multi positioning rotating hitch fitted to the stick as with rock bucket, ripper or scaling hammer (Epiroc SB302T). Options include aftermarket fitted hyraulic drill and boom or shotcreting machine.