The global mining industry in this context refers to machinery and tools that are used to extract and process minerals, ores, precious metals, coal, etc. What all these materials have in common is that they are all very abrasive and/or very hard. Whether open pit mines for coal or copper, closed underground mines for many minerals or mining for carbon or iron-ore, all mines face the same issues of wear on equipment and machinery.
First, the rock or solid surface has to be crushed and further broken down into smaller blocks to allow transport to a processing facility. Second, the blocks have to be crushed again and ground to smaller sizes to allow processing and finally to recover the desired minerals or mineral forms.
The mining and processing of these highly abrasive coals and minerals, along with round-the-clock operations, make the mining industry one of the toughest environments for production machinery in terms of wear. In addition, the machines and tools are subjected to impacts as the rock is crushed, resulting in a combined wear from abrasion and impact. This combination makes it a challenge to determine and apply the optimum surface for these items. It also means that this is a very interesting industry for us as a global supplier of welding consumables for SURFACEprotection and more specifically for WEARprotection.
Typical machines and tools and specific parts subject this type of wear in the mining industry are: Crushers, mill heads and mill head casings made of manganese, shovel dipper wear plates, bucket wheel excavators, cam rings, bucket teeth, drilling head castings, drilling heads, drill bits, dragline excavators, rope drums, buckets, bulldozer wheel loaders, etc.
Wear leads to losses in production efficiency and a reduction of the quality and service life of the machines and tools. It also leads to an increase in maintenance costs for the entire production equipment.
A very efficient solution for increasing the wear resistance and thus extending the service life of production equipment, is the application of wear-resistant or hardfacing weld overlays. The main welding processes for performing or applying wear resistance weld overlays are welding with stick electrodes (SMAW) or welding with cored wires (FCAW).
Welding with stick electrodes is very flexible and can be carried out in all positions and under all circumstances; this is very practical for repairs without having to dissasemble the entire machine. For overhauls and complete refurbishments of the mining equipment, parts and tools, where large or major areas usually need to be rebuilt, welding with hardfacing cored wires offers an advantage in terms of deposition rate and the welding time required, which determines the overall downtime of the equipment. The latter offers a very solid and economical solution. UTP offers a total package of high-quality wear protection welding consumables for maintenance and repair that help optimize the productivity of mining activities.
