BMT WBM Providing its Pulse TerraMetrix RS System to Canadian Mining Company

BMT WBM, a subsidiary of BMT Group Ltd, has announced its latest project with Canada’s largest mining company, Teck Resources, to deliver its Pulse TerraMetrix RS system. This system will manage the machine health, production and payload measurement of Shovel 30 (P&H4100) at Teck’s Greenhills Operation (GHO), near Elkford, in southeast British Columbia.

BMT WBM has worked closely with GHO staff to develop and refine the Pulse TerraMetrix RS system to help address the accuracy issues commonly associated with shovel based payload monitoring systems. Charles Constancon, Director of BMT WBM Canada explains, “Unlike other payload monitoring systems which apply electrical parameter estimation techniques to approximate the payload, the TerraMetrix system employs a loadcell based device and directly measures the inertial and dynamic loads applied to the dipper. As a result, more accurate payload measurement is maintained, even under severe dynamic loading conditions.” 

Configured to communicate with any third party truck dispatch system, the Pulse TerraMetrix RS system can be applied to different models of electric rope shovels including P&H4100 and CAT 7495. Recent developments of the system have included a comprehensive machine health monitoring capability using strain sensing transducers placed on the A-frame and boom structures. These transducers allow the system to track boom jacking and adverse swing events, identify alarm events and quantify the mechanical damage per swing cycle. Productivity indicators provide meaningful online feedback to the operator including average bucket/truck payload, overall shift production, swing cycle time and operating and delay times.

The system developed for Teck is configured to communicate through the mine wireless mesh to a server located in the mine’s administration offices. Data is saved in a SQL database and is accessible through an advanced server analysis programme located on the mine’s intranet.

This enables maintenance, training and production staff to easily access, process and analyze the data on a shift basis, to identify where production shortfalls arise and where further operator training is required.