MechChem Africa November-December 2024

Nils-Peter Ahlqvist, Sales Support Manager for Sandvik Rock Processing (SRP) in Africa and LAM, talks about the SAM monitoring system for crushing equipment under SRP’s care. Remote monitoring for rock crushers

T he remote monitoring system for Sandvik Rock Processing’s (SRP’s) crushing equipment is an integral part of the automation and connec tivity system (ACS) of each of its crushers. “The ACS will display the basic alarms should any important parameter be outside of nor mal operation limits. If, for example, the oil temperature is too high, or the pressure is higher because there is some tramp caught in the crusher. This will all be logged here on the ACS screen as an event history,” begins Nils-Peter Ahlqvist. “But all the data the ACS system mea sures as part of normal machine operations is also being fed into our connected remote monitoring system, which we call SAM. What SAM does it is to collect, condense and analyse all the operational data that we have –excluding anything sensitive such as production figures or product sizes. This data is available, but only to onsite manag

ers via their own secure SCADA system,” he continues. Highlighting the SAM visualisation dashboard, he says that SAM presents an overview that summarises machine opera tion, highlighting instantaneous averages of key operational metrics such as average power being consumed, average pressure and, most importantly, the CSS (close side setting), which governs the particle size of material passing though the crusher. “Typically on a mine, the CSS will be fixed to suit downstream screen settings, but this setting needs to be regularly adjusted to compensate for wear,” Ahlqvist notes, adding that this can be automatically done on modern SRP’s cone crushers. Describing how, he says that regular use of the calibration procedure helps the ma chine to learn over time, so that wear rates can be predicted. To calibrate the crusher, the feed is stopped, while crushing continues

until the chamber of the machine is empty of all material. With the crusher now off, the main shaft that drives the gyrating cone is then raised by a hydraulic cylinder until it makes contact with the mantle. This posi tion is reset as the zero CSS point before the hydraulics moves the cone back down to the operating CSS position. “If the wear is constant, then the system can learn how to automatically reset the gap as time passes. This can reduce the calibration frequency and extend continu ous running times, but there is always going to be some inconsistency, so calibration will

The remote monitoring system for Sandvik Rock Processing’s crushing equipment is an integral part of the automation and connectivity system (ACS) of each of its crushers.

8 ¦ MechChem Africa • November-December 2024