Live face safety tips and tricks.

[aussiechunda]

I wanted to discuss something that is probably never discussed in terms of loaders because it is pretty niche and only really exists in recycling rather than in load and haul.
Load and carry from a live face is in my opinion the most highly skilled and most dangerous loader operation.
Is anyone here familiar with it?
So we are not working a natural face we are working a live man made face and the dynamics of it are very different than working natural material and instead of sitting in place loading a truck you are digging the live face, carrying it to the hopper and loading the plant that way.
First let's talk optimisation before talking about anything else because this also applies to quarries, if we are running 6 30 tonne moxies with 1 loader feeding them and then they dump into the hopper, wouldnt 2 loaders running, one in the pit one at the hopper with 2 bigger dump trucks be more efficient considering the trucks have 0 turn around time at the hopper as they stockpile be better practice?
Second let's discuss a live face, this grows, goes back grows etc and the geotec side is completely different to natural faces which act completely different.
One thing that will happen with load and carry from a live face is undercuts, you are expected as the operator to read that face and know how to undercut that material so it will drop and this is the main risk factor, it is not something that is taught it is not something that is discussed but it is critical for you to go home to your family and the results in any application is less production cost which managers will love at the risk of your life. Engulfment isnt something to take lightly.
But...
With all that said if your machines are not being used optimally you are wasting money and maybe this is an area you should be learning about.
I have attached an image of a very sketchy live concrete face would you dig this material?
Most will answer no but the answer should be yes.
Why aren't we learning about how this process works and if we did how would that impact your business?
Feel free to ask me anything on the topic.

 

[aussiechunda]

For a bit of context here is that full face in relation to the plant, in recycling we have the benefit of our load and carry is conducted by off site operators and truck drivers but this can apply to your pit operations. You can do the same thing at more cost than what I am used to but it will still be less than load and haul.

 

[skyking1]

that face in the first pic is not very tall in my experiences. You can reach most of it with high bucket.
Get a hole in it and reach up and pluck at the lip, clean and repeat.
Where the top is out if reach is where it gets sketchy. We would doze off the top if they did not behave well.

 

[aussiechunda]

that face in the first pic is not very tall in my experiences. You can reach most of it with high bucket.
Get a hole in it and reach up and pluck at the lip, clean and repeat.
Where the top is out if reach is where it gets sketchy. We would doze off the top if they did not behave well.

Our company was recently bought by hiedelberg materials and they hate it lol, they want us to have a benched escavator digging the face and the loader using the material they dig out because they aren't used to live faces, they are used to natural rock faces.

 

[skyking1]

It is not that bad work the whole face when it is tall, don't get yourself stuck in a hole in the face so you can get GOT from the side. When it gets hung bad, walk something over and break it down.

 

[CM1995]

I would dig in that bank and as Sky said if it gets out of reach doze from the top. Use that technique all the time with my 953 track loader.

Side question - How do ya'll get the trash - mostly the plastic vapor barrier - out of the crushed finished product?

 

[Nige]

I always opined that a Front End Loaders were called that, as opposed to Front End Excavators, for a reason. they are designed to load loose material not to dig out in-situ or poorly fragmented material.

I agree with CM. If there are problems with material hanging up in a particular area then the simple solution is to push it down from above with a dozer.

 

[skyking1]

I and others mined all the rock to build the Cowlitz Falls Dam with a 988B with a spade, and the 980C when it was broken ( thankfully not too often!) It was not loose material.
We stripped the unsuitable off the top with dozers but did nothing but work the face with the loader.
One guy could work the supply side on the little mom and pop crusher. One guy worked the clean side with a 966.
Any other solution added more hands and more pieces.

 

[Nige]

Having the appropriate type of bucket and GET installed when attempting to load out material like this is a big plus. Should be mandatory…..

 

[John C.]

In the small coal mines I worked at we used a dozer to strip overburden and push it to wheel loaders loading trucks. Drilled and shot the the overburden underneath, then pushed it down to get a steep face and then loaded with wheel loaders. Found it to be cost effective to rip and push the glacial till instead of shooting later on. They had to shoot the sandstone underneath the till to get to the coal seams. They went to a hydraulic front shovel after I left in hopes that it would be cheaper and faster than the wheel loaders. It didn't work out that way. We used spade nose armored buckets on the 988B and the WA600 wheel loaders.
In the gravel operations I worked at, the wheel loaders moved the material with no ripping or shooting. They worked the hell out of the hydraulics and implements digging the pit run. All of that was live face and was benched usually at just below highest reach of the wheel loader. As to the type of buckets on the wheel loaders, those were GP with straight edges and only teeth and no edge bits. I've always felt that the type of material and the production considerations determines the type of bucket used. Sand and gravel operations loading highway trucks do just fine with straight edged GP buckets with teeth. Load and carry usually had straight nose with cutting edges and the mining machines had spade nose armored buckets with zipper lips. At the smaller mines the machine had what ever came with the machine as they were usually purchased used.

 

[skyking1]

I've only ever operated the 988B with a spade, even loading out really fluffy topsoil that got dozed up for me. I guess it was what Tri State had.
I know that when the -B broke at the Dam job, it was a miserable day trying to keep up with the straight bucket on the 980C. It had two different front tires, no brakes, and the pit floor looked like a farmer was working it with a plow. You all know when the boss says "mix up your tracks" when it was getting muddy?
We were fooling no one with that 980 plow action.

 

[aussiechunda]

I would dig in that bank and as Sky said if it gets out of reach doze from the top. Use that technique all the time with my 953 track loader.

Side question - How do ya'll get the trash - mostly the plastic vapor barrier - out of the crushed finished product?

We have a wind sifter, air vac and 2 poor souls that take it out by hand

 

[aussiechunda]

Having the appropriate type of bucket and GET installed when attempting to load out material like this is a big plus. Should be mandatory…..

I load the plant from that face with a 988xe, has a fairly small bucket only holding about 12 tonnes of raw product but the travel time isnt much our plant is only rated for 350 tonnes per hour and the small bucket makes it dig like it is digging through butter. a lot of my down time is spent moving finished product or pushing over down to the face at the tip head. In saying that the next size down of machine barely keeps up, I blew up our wa500-7 last year trying to keep the plant fed while our face loader was out of action for 6 months, also have to remove steel from the picker huts and magnets and also the rubbish between loading the plant and a wa500 just isnt big enough

 

[aussiechunda]

Oh that's a thought probably foreign to mining folk, we use wheel loaders as dozers at the tip head.
Loader has its ups and downs for it. Takes a skilled operator to do a good grade in a loader and we have members of the public tipping their trucks off not dump trucks so floor levels need to be near perfect and that isnt easy with a fixed bucket.

 

[aussiechunda]

I would dig in that bank and as Sky said if it gets out of reach doze from the top. Use that technique all the time with my 953 track loader.

Side question - How do ya'll get the trash - mostly the plastic vapor barrier - out of the crushed finished product?

Yeah just call the escavator over