(July 15, 2011)

Gear specialist David Brown Gear Industries is extending its reach across South Africa and many other regions in the world by establishing new gearbox service centres.

At the beginning of this month, it opened a service centre in the Northern Cape to provide technical support and services for the gearboxes used on 23 mines in the province, including Kumba Iron Ore’s Sishen mine, says sales director Bill Gorman.

“Our customers wanted a technical presence in the area to support their gearboxes.”

The 623 m2 facility has a lifting capacity of 12.5 t and provides stripping, fitting, minor machining, testing and painting services, says David Brown Gear Industries aftermarket service centre manager Darryl Elliott.

Field services, including commissioning, installation, consulting and monitoring, are provided. A full-time service manager and a team of service fitters have been employed.

“The service centre provides an opportunity to quickly respond to the Northern Cape market, where most mineral processing plants are of a significant age and large investments are made every year to maintain gearboxes,” notes Elliott.

Customers are able to contact the centre 24 hours a day and can expect the centre’s staff to respond to breakdowns in a notice period as short as one hour.

The facility manages quotes and orders and has sufficient space to keep a stock of gears and bearings as contract spares.

Meanwhile, the gear specialist plans to open another service centre in Middelburg, Mpumalanga, in the next 5 to 12 months, where a large population of its gearboxes are in operation. This will provide customers in this region with similar technical services and backup.

The company is also considering opening a service centre in Central Africa to provide support to its clients in that region, says Gorman.

“In the middle of June, we opened a service centre in Antofagasta, in northern Chile, to provide technical support to the mines in the area, and we are opening a service centre in the US, also for the mining industry. We will open other service centres throughout the world to provide various services to other client industries,” he adds.

Homegrown Gears

Meanwhile, the company has also invested in new equipment, including a new 1.5 m Niles grinding machine, which will work alongside the existing 3 m Niles grinding machine at the company’s factory, in Benoni, Gauteng. Both machines will be kept in temperature-controlled environments, enabling them to achieve the highest accuracy expected from David Brown products, says Gorman.

Further, the company has installed a 3 m carburising furnace, the largest in Southern Africa, which is used in con- junction with the 3 m Niles grinding machine.

“Customers demand good thermal ratings, good mechanical ratings and good bearing-life ratings for their gear- boxes. Others demand adaptations, such as the ability to flip the gearbox upside-down or increased cooling on the casings,” notes Gorman.

Gearboxes can only disperse as much heat as the casing’s surface area allows and the company has conducted thermal imaging of gearboxes in operation to determine where heat is generated and stored. Based on these tests, the company has designed cooling fins for its gearbox casings and has also developed a new cooling fan to remove excess heat. Its range of conveyor drives is specifically designed to accommodate the high ambient temperatures common in Africa.

The cooling fans were designed by one of the company’s design engineers, who completed a BSc course in aviation engineering at the University of the Witwatersrand.

Design Standards

Further, the company has been designing gearboxes, with bearing lives of about 130 000 hours, to L10 A ISO standards for a large US mining company.

“We design our gearboxes to all inter- national standards, as well as country-specific conveyor standards, such as those set by the US Conveyor Manufacturers Association. This is part of our efforts to meet varying customer demands for gearboxes closely matched to their process needs,” he says.

Meanwhile, the company reports that, while business for the first six months of this year has been slow, it is able to report a steady increase in business and contracts.

“We have won several major contracts this year, such as one for the port handling system to be built for the new coal export terminal in Beira, Mozambique. We have also started the delivery of equipment to a large, new uranium mine, in Namibia. We are also aiming to secure contracts with large US-based mining groups.”

Further, the company has a technical team that provides training for clients on site, in South Africa and around the world. The company plans to roll out this service throughout Africa and to other areas around the globe. Its team recently returned from the US after training clients from a large US mining group in how to evaluate bearing-life ratings of gearboxes, he concludes.

Other News:
Gear Specialist Extends its Footprint
Schaeffler Receives Two Supplier Awards from Siemens Mobility Rolling Stock
Simplicity Linear Bearing’s Self-Alignment Feature
SDP/SI - Timing Belt Pulleys are Suited for Miniature Applications
Nippon Pulse America - SCR100 High Precision Cross Roller Linear Stage
New Way Air Bearings® Issued Patent for Air Bar Concept
Rail Mounting Instructions for Hevi-Rail
PBC Linear Provides Compact Bio-Sample Handling Solution