Ray do you find that today you do work that say 30 years ago would have been done by disassembling the machine and taking the parts to a workshop to be put on a big machine like a horizontal borer?
I wonder what the future will bring... Portable CNC controlled borers capable of threading and everything in between....
RC, I think at least here in WA 95 percent of boring work on bigger stuff like heavy excavator booms,sticks and buckets are done with portable equipment.
When I started in 1988 Hofmanns had just developed their first Mark 1 machine and it immediately changed the way things were done as it was the only professional machine around here at the time.
It seemed one day I was doing Cat 920 and 930 loader frames and buckets and next thing the first generation of Liebherr 994's were wearing out and all of a sudden I'm all the state over doing 600mm bores and 850mm faces on the swing box mounts. It was a very sudden and steep learning curve.
And of course with reclamation work the fact that we can weld and machine in the one set up right where the machine died means that its much more cost efficient than dismantling and getting it to a shop.
The 3rd reason is that sadly very few workshops have floor borers with a table big enough to sit a 30 tonne 12 metre long boom on. Hofmanns do but their machinery is generally booked out 2 years in advance. RCR have as well although they can't traverse 12 metres to do it all in one set up.
So really all the bigger buckets from say 50 tonne up are done by portable equipment. Shops like Leightons or BHP will do the fabrication and repairs in house. Then send it to RCR or Hofmanns for stress relieving and the comes back for line boring.
At one of the meeting I had with Hofmanns regarding the Mark 3 machine it was mentioned that the new model will be a fill in before portable line boring machinery will be going NC. I can't picture it myself but I suppose its got to happen. I suppose at present onsite line boring is one of the last jobs around where you have to have old fashioned manual skills to do the job. People coming through sometimes don't have those skills but can program a computer to do anything. I can't see it being acceptable in years to come either that you climb on top of a scraper gooseneck to weld and machine a steering bore or wriggle under a D10 in the mud to do the equaliser bar pivots. Interesting times ahead
