Power management company Eaton’s Aeroquip X-Flex very high pressure spiral hose has been performing to expectations and enabling continuous miners, which operate in highly abrasive environments, to meet their contracted coal extraction rate terms by increasing uptime and decreasing maintenance and service times.
To overcome the challenge of rigorous daily service regimes in a South African underground coal mine, the mine’s continuous miner supplier replaced Eaton’s original GH506 hose assembly with the company’s higher-specification Aeroquip X-Flex hose to ensure that the continuous miners met or exceeded the mine’s targeted coal extraction rate.
Eaton’s GH506 is usually the preferred hose used on continuous miners, offering excellent performance when cleaned and serviced regularly. The hose-end fitting features a special wire trap design that requires the hose to be both externally and internally skived to help ensure hose and fitting integrity under impulse conditions.
The company explains that most continuous miner breakdowns stem from the shear cylinders which move the machine’s cutting bobbin. With daily servicing, these areas are cleared of coal debris and the assembly is checked for any cuts, signs of abrasion or visible leaks from the threaded connection.
At this particular mine site, which operated several continuous miners, the total yearly downtime as a result of failure of hydraulic hose assemblies was 9 000 minutes, equating to about $1.5-million in lost production, recounts Eaton team lead salesperson for Southern Africa Jorge De Lima.
“Here, the servicing regime had gradually relaxed over time and the hose assembly was failing.”
On replacement of this original hose assembly with Eaton’s Aeroquip X-Flex very high-pressure spiral hose, duty time increased considerably and downtime for the mine was reduced by 2 000 minutes, says De Lima.
X-Flex features a rugged, abrasion-resistant Dura-Tuff cover, which provides longer life in this abrasive environment, compared with the original high-pressure hose. In addition, it provides a 46% reduction in the force-to-bend ratio, which makes it easier for suppliers to handle in the shop, and requires less time to fit on the equipment.
When used in conjunction with one-piece Aeroquip global spiral TTC crimp fittings, the X-Flex hose assembly is also easier to build, since skiving is not required.