ThyssenKrupp Material Handling supports clients in large scale material handling applications specifically in the areas of open pit mining, minerals processing and bulk material handling. The company contacted Bonfiglioli to supply drives for discharge and spillage conveyors on Lihir Gold’s process plant expansion project at its Lihir Island operation in New Ireland province of Papua New Guinea. The application consists of two jaw crushing lines operating in parallel. Each Line has two conveyors; one for discharging and one for spillage. The discharge conveyors have a throughput of 1,200 t/h (wet), while the spillage conveyors receive 20% of that throughput in finer ores from spillage. The general needs of the application were for operation 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks per year. Discharge conveyors to have right angle bevel helical with rigid flange couplings, backstops, fluid couplings. Spillage conveyors to be shaft mounted gear motors with torque arm Bearing L-10 life to be greater that 60,000 hours and gear life to be 100, 000 hours. The Lihir upgrade will increase total annual gold production on average by approximately 240,000 oz/y from 2012 over the remaining life of the operation.
Bonfiglioli has extended the versatility of its new HD series of advanced heavy duty drives by introducing an alignment-free configuration that cost-effectively integrates motor and gearbox. The company’s recently expanded Drives Service Centre came up with an ‘Alignment Free’ input design for the Lihir project which negates the need for a costly baseplate. The ‘Alignment Free’ input is basically a large bell housing that contains the fluid coupling, fan and provides a standard IEC interface for the flange mounted motor. This type of input also saves time and labour during commissioning of the drive as the alignment of the transmission components has already been done. Vents cut in the bell housing allow air from the fan to be forced along a path to provide optimum cooling for the gearbox. The bell housing also has a additional benefit as it provides a collection point for fluid lost by the fluid coupling in case of a blowout. The job was won simply by providing more benefits at a lower cost.
Discharge Conveyor Specifications: two 2 x HDO110 3 24.6 LPB R1 VP B3 FAN MOP A CW TK OLG ‘Alignment-Free’ drives fitted with free issued Teco 75 kW four-pole motors
Spillage Conveyors: A703 US 72.5 P132 fitted with free issued Teco 5.5 kW motors
The new HD AFD joins Bonfiglioli’s expanding range of Australasian-engineered mounting options for specific applications, offering an alternative to laser-aligned baseplate types that allows the use of close coupled IEC B5 flange mounted motors up to a G315 frame size. The HD AFD combinations – with capacities up to 1,722 kW and 150,000 Nm – complement Bonfiglioli’s Hi Torque drives and offer quick, trouble-free assembly and maintenance of high speed components including fans, fluid couplings and brakes.
HD AFD models can save both time and money in a range of applications because there is no need to laser align the motor and gearbox shafts, says the Managing Director, Bonfiglioli Transmission (Australia), Malcolm Lewis. In addition to reduced initial costs compared with traditional baseplate designs, the HD AFD configuration enhances serviceability by permitting high speed components to be removed and replaced without the need for re-alignment.
Applications include conveyor drives, shuttle drives, bucket elevators, inching drives and other materials handling equipment. The HD AFD is produced in Australia on Bonfiglioli’s new production and testing line that cuts delivery times out of Europe by more than half for most models. Local production, combined with in-depth local engineering expertise, enables Bonfiglioli to custom-engineer specific solutions for industrial equipment and mobile equipment. Bonfiglioli’s HD drives series is a totally new generation of large industrial drives resulting from more than three years development to produce outstanding reliability and torque densities to record values, says Lewis.