A wind-powered device is being developed in South Australia to help maintain visibility and safety for workers on mine sites. The Spinflector is a device to clean reflectors on delineator posts at mines to help maintain visibility for machinery operators.

Trampas Cutler developed the Spinflector in Port Lincoln, South Australia and has trialled unitys at an iron ore mine in the state’s Iron Triangle for the past five months without incident.

He said at most mine sites, teams of workers travelled almost weekly along major thoroughfares manually cleaning dust and grime from the reflectors, creating safety issues, loss of productivity and additional labour costs.

“It’s an endless job as the reflectors get dirtied with grime over and over again,” said Cutler, the Spinflector Industries Founding Director.

“That interrupts production because they have to put signage in place, they have to have clear radio communications with the trucks to tell them to slow down when they drive past and the massive safety issue of them being run over by a machine.”

The Spinflector is designed to fit on a 50 mm PVC delineator post and contains a series of brushes to clean dust and grime from reflectors.

The device has a built-in wind vane to power the brushes.

“Even on fairly calm days you’re always going to have the odd gust of wind and it only really needs to rotate about half a dozen times in a 48-hour period to take the layer of dust off and be effective – it just doesn’t allow a build-up of dirt,” Cutler said.