The subsidiaries HighService Technology and MIRS announced emerging technologies in mining equipment maintenance and its impact on operations productivity and safety.
The participation of this innovation companies of the Chilean holding HighService Corp during the International Mining Maintenance Congress: Mapla-Mantemin 2018 attracted a great interest. These are the subsidiaries HighService Technology, specialized in technological solutions, and MIRS, leader in robotic solutions for mining and heavy industries.
Both companies unveiled their emerging technologies in mining equipment maintenance and its impact on tasks productivity workers safety. HighService Technology and MIRS have a proven track record in the mining market, with technological and robotic solutions operating in the main sites of Chile, Peru and the United States.
Predictive maintenance of blade valves using wireless sensors and artificial intelligence algorithms
As experts in technological innovation, HighService Technology has designed different sensors that are capable of measuring, with decimal precision, variables that affect the operation of mining equipment.
On the occasion, Faviola Molina, leader of the Artificial Intelligence Area of HighService Technology, presented the advances in the SensoValv device. This sensor identifies the state of opening or closing of guillotine valves, in addition to feeding algorithms of artificial intelligence that are the basis of the predictive and preventive system of failures.
“We have built several models that are based on real field data and simulations that run in our laboratory based on a network of physical models. At the moment, we have managed to predict the failure of a valve with a level of certainty over 82%. If you apply this system in the valve, you would obtain an additional availability of almost 40 hours a year”, explained the executive.
Robotic grinding maintenance SAG
For its part, MIRS gave an account of the work carried out with KUKA Robotics for more than 4 years, during which time it took on the challenge of bringing robots to the mechanical maintenance of SAG mills.
“We show the progress made in field tests in Antofagasta, from stage one, with a 40-mill SAG mill trommel on a real scale. We present a comparison of times, between the current situation of manual works versus the automated robotic process of changing palmettes”, said Mario Yañez, mechanical development engineer from MIRS, who detailed that the benefits of implementing robotics in this type of repetitive tasks are enormous.
“A standard of uniform quality in the installation of the palmettes is achieved, a drastic reduction of the times in global terms and an improvement of the safety and occupational health conditions in the operation, eliminating physical risks overloads to the workers”, said the MIRS specialist.