If not designed, monitored and managed correctly and timeously, mill liner wear can result in expensive equipment failure and inferior grind quality, which will have a negative ripple effect on the operation of mills. Multotec Rubber ensures that liner design is optimal for the life of the liners and performs condition monitoring on installed liners to ensure maximised uptime by facilitating proactive maintenance.

The liner optimisation system comprises a number of elements including MillTraj modelling design software as well as Mill Liner Scanner and Hawkeye to perform condition monitoring for a complete and efficient way of managing mill liners. MillTraj is a software package used to optimise liner design by assessing the impact of varying operational and design parameters on mill charge trajectory to achieve the most effective grind.  The Mill Liner Scanner is a laser measuring device that provides Multotec with the ability to perform quick and accurate profile measurements using a more cost effective solution than other traditional mill scanning systems. This system is currently undergoing developmental testing and will be launched to the market during the course of 2015. Hawkeye converts readings from a Mill Liner Scanner into easy to understand graphical displays of liner wear.

Acquiring a pre-emptive understanding of the dynamics involved in mill liner wear gains valuable ground and provides a distinct market advantage for organisations driven by maximised uptime.  During the life of the lifters the rate at which they wear increases due to greater slippage of the charge and this means that straight-line tonnage or time based predictions of the liner change-outs can result in unscheduled stoppages due to liner failure. By being able to proactively and predictively determine liner wear based on recorded tonnage, Multotec is able to replace customer liners before failure occurs. This eliminates unnecessary downtime and allows scheduled maintenance programmes to be implemented for increased productivity and safety.

Visitors to Electra Mining Africa will be able to see demonstrations of these technologies in action on Multotec’s stand.