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Mining Optical Sensing
About the Project
In collaboration with Cleveland Electric Laboratories, CMS created a system that would conduct a fatigue and stress analysis on the Terra Nova Mining Equipment. The equipment system was installed on a Traveling Tripper and Tracker land conveyer. These conveyers cover a mile of transport of unrefined copper. They are moved by a crawler that is built into each section. Moving these conveyers is like continually moving a building from one location to another.
The conveyers had severe structural problems where the crawlers were forming cracks at the drive crawlers. When the crew would perform on site maintenance, they would only end up shifting the problem to other areas. The key to fixing this problem is to understand the stress and where it is coming from. To do this, CMS installed optical sensors to pin point the key support areas. The conveyers are capable of millions of dollars of revenue per day. Incidentally while one of these machines is down they are losing all of that money and it was happening at least once a week. With the urgency of this situation, CMS reported on site within three days of contact and within a week the problem was fixed.
 
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