Tag Archives: excavator bucket

Austin Engineering expands into South Africa with ETT partnership

Australia-based Austin Engineering says it has signed a partnership agreement with South Africa’s ETT to market and support their combined mining-oriented product ranges throughout Africa.

The agreement, which follows around 12 months of talks, will bring together two of the southern hemisphere’s largest mining equipment design and manufacturing entities, Austin said.

Austin has more than 50 years of global experience in engineering and manufacturing equipment for the mining industry with operations in Australia, Asia, North and South America, and now South Africa. ETT, meanwhile, is a privately-owned South Africa-based company with products already distributed in more than 20 countries around the world.

Austin Engineering Managing Director, Peter Forsyth (pictured on the left), said: “We are looking forward to growing this partnership. It gives both companies a solid and reliable platform from which to offer customers throughout the continent proven world-class products backed up by world-class service.”

ETT Managing Director, Andre McDuling (pictured on the right), added: “ETT’s manufacturing and innovative record, as well as our strong presence and product supply into Africa, is one of the key reasons why this partnership was formed. We are confident that the industry is ready for a partnership like this that will provide the widest range of mining attachments and support products in the world.”

The combined product range of the new partnership will include customised dump truck bodies, water trucks, diesel lube trucks, gooseneck-equipped recovery vehicles, tyre handlers, low bed off-road trailers and excavator buckets.

Austin Engineering after safety and service life boost with two-piece excavator bucket

Austin Engineering has designed and manufactured a new two-piece excavator bucket that, it says, can both improve safety and service life.

The bucket assembly features well-defined reusable upper and consumable lower structures, designed for quick and safe bucket change-outs during scheduled maintenance intervals, the company said.

The bucket has been structurally verified for the nominated fatigue life using both ANSYS FEA software and EDEM simulation, according to Austin. This showed the new bucket assembly will achieve the theoretical target payload at the nominated fill factor. Meanwhile, the upper and lower sections of the new bucket are fabricated with combinations of high-strength steel for maximum fatigue resistance and durability, Austin said.

“The design is focused on safety with extensive consideration given to the potential for ‘stored energy’ safety hazards to exist and these have been eliminated from the design wherever practical,” Austin said.

The reusable upper section maintains overall structural integrity of the bucket assembly for a predetermined service life through multiple change-outs of the lower, consumable, section, according to the company.

The typical baseline service life for the upper section service will be in the vicinity of 30,000 hours; around four-to-five years based on industry expectations of conventional one-piece buckets of similar size and capacities, Austin said.

“Designed to be mine site and application-specific, the upper section offers scope for customisation and benefits proportionate to minimising costs over the assembly’s operational life,” the company said.

The bucket is available as fully-lined or liner-less, while the consumable lower section features a simplified design to improve the change-out time of a complete lower section or the removal and replacement of worn individual components.

For fully liner-less, lower bucket assemblies, the resulting structure uses alternative high strength and wear resistant materials in key areas along with increased thickness of identified structural components, according to Austin.

“Components subject to high wear and impact, such as the main shell and side plates, are designed as modular inserts which can be customised to customer specific operations,” Austin said, adding that these can be easily removed and replaced if required ahead of planned change-out.

Replaced lower sections provide an option for remanufacturing and can be returned to site for storage and direct replacement as required.