AN INSPIRED D11 GET TRIAL

HASTINGS DEERING HAS HELPED SOJITZ CORPORATION SAVE THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS IN OPERATING COSTS AT ITS GREGORY COAL MINE IN QUEENSLAND'S BOWEN BASIN.

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For more than 40 years, the Gregory mine located 60km northeast of Emerald in Queensland has been known as one of Australia's premier coking coal operations.

Gregory has a three-million-tonne-per-annum production capacity and a mine life of more than 20 years, and boasts a fleet of 20 mining trucks, 80 per cent of which are Caterpillar (Cat) branded.

The challenge

Since Sojitz Corporation acquired Gregory in 2019, the mine has utilised Cat's ground engaging tools (GET) on its ancillary fleet, specifically using the EWL (extended wear life) cutting edges on its Cat D11 large track-type tractors (LTTT).

While using this system, Sojitz was flipping cutting edges at an average of 350 hours and changing a new set of cutting edges at approximately 700 hours.

The company manages its D11 tractors on a 500-hour preventive maintenance (PM) interval and wasn't changing its GET in the field due to safety concerns.

This saw the machines trammed long distances to the workshop to both flip and change the GET, leading to two additional trips to the workshop within a 1000-hour operating period.