A roller load test was conducted before and after a repair outage on a Bucyrus 1570W dragline to identify the geometry issues within the roller circle and eliminate them.
The initial findings indicated the remaining useful roller circle component life was very low due to multiple geometry issues in the rail path, which caused very high forces and stresses in the roller and rail components.
These geometry issues were removed by re-machining four rails, using precision cut profiles created by MachineLife, with feedback from the roller load test.
The follow up roller load test (after the repair outage) showed the geometry issues were removed, and as a result the current roller circle components remaining useful life had increased by 550%, from 8,000 hours to 44,000 hours, providing the mine a significant costs savings, when compared to wholesale component replacement.
