Excavators @ MINExpo 2000
Rock Products, December 2000MINExpo International 2000, the National Mining Association's showcase for mining and minerals-processing equipment, products and services, lived up to its advance billing as the largest show of its kind. The event attracted more than 36,500 registrants and 1,292 exhibitors to the Las Vegas Convention Center, Oct. 9-12, 2000. Although primarily focused on the hard-rock and coal industries, the wide range of products on display at the quadrennial event included many that are equally at home in aggregate operations.
In describing the features of the dozens of new or improved products displayed at the show, many suppliers seemed to gravitate toward three main themes: price, performance and precision. The price of new equipment is always a major consideration, of course, but in this case, manufacturers were referring instead to the market price of metals and industrial minerals mined by their customers.
Machine performance is extremely important to producers facing increasing competition in their market sectors, and manufacturers have developed a number of approaches to improve equipment productivity, economy and durability.
Caterpillar introduced the 5110B hydraulic excavator. The 5110B is a 275,000-lb, 696-hp hydraulic excavator configured as a backhoe, or mass excavator in Cat nomenclature, intended to fill a gap between the company's 375L and 5130B models. The excavator's cross-mounted 3412E HEUI diesel is the same 27-l-displacement engine used in Cat's 773D truck, 990 wheel loader, D10 dozer and 24H grader. The 5510B's swing drives, main control valves, and track-tensioning system are taken from the 5130B excavator.
With a standard bucket size of 9.9 cu yd, boom length of almost 25 ft, and stick lengths of 11.1 or 13.4 ft, the 5110B is targeted primarily for mining or heavy construction jobs using trucks in the 50- to 100-ton capacity range. Cat reports the machine will load a 773D in four passes and the 100-ton 777 in seven, averaging less than 24 seconds per pass in field testing. Designed for convenient transportability, the 5110B can be shipped on six trucks, assembled with one 100- to 120-ton crane in approximately 120 work hours, and disassembled by a four-person crew in about 12 hours.
The new excavator employs proportional priority, pressure-compensated hydraulic controls, which allow the operator to select variable degrees of priority between different circuits, eliminating the need for extra switches to set work mode or swing priority. Instead, the 5110B's controls optimize performance on a given application by sensing the operator's joystick input, according to Cat. The new excavator was scheduled to be released to the market in December 2000.
Komatsu Mining Systems unveiled its PC1800-6 hydraulic excavator and WA700-3 wheel loader. The PC1800-6 is available in backhoe or front shovel configurations with more power and capacity than its predecessor, the PC1600. Two Komatsu SAA6D140E-2 engines with a combined output of 908 hp power a load-sensing hydraulic system in the new excavator, providing three working modes that allow the operator to match machine performance with the job conditions.
The boom, stick, revolving frame and center frame have been strengthened for durability, according to Komatsu, and output from each main hydraulic pump flows to a dedicated, high-pressure inline filter to reduce system wear and maintenance requirements. Machine health is monitored by Komatsu's VHMS system, with information displayed on a touch-screen display. Other operator-friendly touches include 10 viscous-damper cab mounts to reduce vibration, and a higher-capacity climate control system. Standard bucket size in the backhoe version is 15.7 cu yd.
