Capital Equipment News July 2017

Rebuild Centre has the capacity to perform complete rebuilds, partial rebuilds, warranty repairs as well as fix-as-fail services. “Fix-as-fail is when the engine fails at the mine site and has to come back to us. We troubleshoot to understand why it failed and we replace what is damaged,” says Mohale. The facility also has the ability to dyno test every engine after rebuilding to ensure engines perform to specification. To cater for this, Cummins Southern Africa invested in two dyno testing cells (800 hp and 4 650 hp) as part of the 2015 upgrade. When an engine arrives, it comes with an instruction of what work should be done on it. The life history of the particular engine is also supplied. This includes previous issues it had and what sort of maintenance was carried out, as well as the whole service history. The information is provided by Cummins service technicians based at the mines, as well as area managers in different locations where the engines are operating. Once the instructions and the life history have been received, the engine is dismantled in order to provide a quote. This is to ensure that the cost of fixing it will not outstrip the cost of buying a new one. In these circumstances, the customer is advised accordingly. “It is important that once we dismantle the engine we put together a quotation and only go ahead with the job when the customer agrees,” says Mohale, who notes that there are some instances during zero-hour rebuilds that they discover damaged engine blocks, and this may in some instances lead to high rebuild costs. In these circumstances, buying a new engine is a better option than trying to fix it. Most of the processes are done in-house, except for some machining processes on the blocks, cam shafts, con-rods and crankshafts that are outsourced to a service provider, Metric Automotive Engineering. b

Haver & Boecker has announced the addition of a refurbishment programme to its breadth of services and equipment for the mining and aggregate industries.