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Case Studies
Rio Tinto Argyle Diamonds
Western Australia
| The Argyle Diamond Mine in the northeast Kimberley region
of Western Australia was the first Australian company to
realize the advantages of using the Duratray Suspended Dump
Body System. |
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Mine Profile
In 1979, the Argyle Diamond Pipe was discovered on Smoke Creek
near Lake Argyle. In 1983,
construction work began on the main open-cut mine and process
plant. Since the mine's opening
in 1985, it has produced over 600 million carats (120,000 kg) of
diamonds. The mine is owned by
Rio Tinto Group, a diversified mining company which also owns the
Rio Tinto Diavik mine in
Canada.
Duratray at Argyle Diamond
The Argyle Diamond Mine operates in a very hard
and abrasive quartzite-the
VCS is 250 Mpa.
Argyle’s first fleet of trucks was equipped with steel bodies
fitted with a standard liner kit that
failed after less than 1,250 hours. The trays were relined with
a 25mm (1”) thick liner plate of
400 Brinell hardness, making them extremely heavy. However, this
resulted in a liner life of only
about 3,000 hours. Argyle today operates a fleet of 190-ton trucks,
all equipped with Duratray
SDBs that give a body lifetime of 65,000-80,000 loads between replacement
of the wear mats.
“For our second set of trucks, it was necessary to find
a better and more economical solution to
our wear problem”, said W. R. “Dick” Yates, Manager
of Mining for Argyle. “The Duratray bodies,
with a suspended rubber floor, consistently gave a life time over
three times longer than the
heaviest steel lining. And that with a body weight that is comparable
with the weight of an
unlined steel body.”
He continues, “Extra payload, operator satisfaction, and
a lower operating cost made it simple to
select body alternatives for our truck fleet. Including capital
cost and repair and service, we today
estimate a saving of 64% in total dump body cost. If it was calculated
on per ton of hauled
material, it would be a significantly higher number but as we don’t
have the exact comparison for
steel bodies on the current truck size, we leave it at 64%.
“We are particularly pleased with [Duratray’s]
continued improvement of performance without
any real price escalation. Over the nine years we have used SDBs,
the wear life has doubled.”
Monday, April 24, 2006
To Whom It May Concern:
Diavik (Rio Tinto)
is a diamond mine in the artic of Canada and use these
boxes on our 11 - 830 Komatsu fleet and have done so for the
last 4 years.
Our mine has a strip ratio of about 25 to 1 which is very high
and if it wasn’t
diamonds we would not be mining.
Our waste rock has been deemed as the oldest hard rock on
the planet at
about 55 million years old and is pure granite. And very abrasive
our bucket
life is about 2500 hours or less, not good. We have had a successful
experience with Duratray, which has been very good and excellent
support.
We are seeing up to 15,000 Hrs before mat
c/o and with the new and
improved side walls these boxes have really stood up. As I
have said many
times to other mines interested in these boxes we have the
most extreme
weather and rock conditions of any mine and these boxes have
more than
exceeded our expectations.
The turnaround time on mat change outs and basic welding
repair is days
instead of weeks and the number one thing I find in these boxes
is that we
have experienced zero frame cracks, which 830 trucks are known
for so that
means they absorb the shock while loading. I have been told
that operators
are even drinking their coffee while being loaded.
I would suggest to anyone to take up the training that you
make available to
both ops and maintenance because these boxes needed to be managed
different than steel boxes. Please feel free to give any one
my phone number
if they wish to speak to me directly.
Regards,
John de Boer
Maintenance Superintendent
Diavik Diamond Mine
John.DeBoer@diavik.com |
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