Tribco Inc of Cleveland, Ohio, is gearing up to showcase a full line of upgraded brake and transmission discs for mobile equipment and other mining applications at MINExpo International 2021, with one of the booth highlights being its patented Kevlar® fibred composite friction lining for mining components.

The company says it is filling a need for longer maintenance intervals in transmissions and brakes in mobile equipment and, on top of Kevlar mining components, can service the sector with high-performance Braketex® and Clutchtex® discs. These are “drop in” replacement discs dimensionally and metallically-equal to OEM discs, according to the company.

Users have seen three-to-five times longer wear life with Tribco Braketex and Clutchtex products in applications such as load, haul and support vehicles for underground and surface equipment with up to 240 ton (218 t) payloads.

Ahead of the company’s appearance at MINExpo in Las Vegas, taking place on September 13-15, Charles Peirce, Sales Manager at Tribco, said the company’s discs are now running on six continents.

Some examples include an install on a Caterpillar 777E haul truck at a gold mine in the Philippines, underground Komatsu haul trucks in Montana – which have been running Tribco discs in place of graphitic discs for years, averaging four times longer component life than those equipped with OEM discs – and a salt mine under Lake Erie, in the US. This latter case has seen the entire fleet of loaders now running Clutchtex-lined transmission discs in place of the original equipment paper-lined discs.

The low wear rate and greater heat resistance of Clutchtex is proving to be an advantage, Peirce said.