Underground equipment manufacturer MacLean Engineering announced last month that the first-ever MacLean GR5 underground road grader has been shipped to Africa and that additional units have been scheduled for factory production.

The newest addition to MacLean’s Mine-Mate utility vehicles, which offer a “rugged, high-performance mobile solution” for maintaining haulage, is about to be introduced to Africa’s mining industry.

The GR5 mining vehicle is the result of a product evolution for MacLean, with the process starting back in 2018, when the company collaborated with specialty engineering firm Medatech to retrofit a battery electric grader.

Based on the engineering and manufacturing learnings from this one-off project, MacLean embarked on a collaborative process to better understand the grader vehicle category, so that it could be successfully adapted from road to underground mining applications.

Working closely with professionals from a former Canadian original-equipment manufacturer with decades of road grader industry expertise, MacLean went back to the drawing board to develop a fit-for-purpose grader design for the underground environment.

While most products in this category tend to be considered too lightweight for the work, the GR5 is purposely sized to match the tractive effort and drawbar pull of full-sized surface graders.

The unit features a controller area network bus control system. This allows joystick control technology to be deployed for simultaneous steering and application functions to ease operator comfort and control. It also boasts an onboard vehicle telemetry package that can monitor the performance and health of the vehicle.

On the powertrain side, the unit can be either battery electric- or diesel-powered, and comes standard with a six-wheel infinitely adjustable drive system using dual hydrostatic motors and active traction control.

Size, manoeuvrability, visibility, simplicity, and ruggedness were key design factors.

As a result, the unit is similar in height to the rest of the MacLean utility vehicle product line and is designed to work optimally in 5 m × 5 m headings.

The unit’s design also includes a combination of frame articulation and front-wheel steering, which minimises its turning radius underground. Its mouldboard system uses a simpler design than its surface grader counterparts to ensure durability and reliability.

“When we designed the GR5 grader we started from the ground up, where we literally began with a clean slate and developed the rig using the latest in proven technologies and components,” says MacLean senior product manager Dan Stern.

He adds that the GR5’s cab environment was developed using a virtual reality (VR) developer Oculus’ Rift VR headset to map out the placement of controls, as well as verify the visibility and sightlines.

“The VR technology ultimately allowed us to get a good sense of what this rig would feel like to operate before any steel was cut,” said Stern.

“The product development approach on this unit is a great example of what we like to call MacLean ‘Application Intelligence’,” says MacLean engineering VP David Jacques.

He explains the concept: The company takes its mobile equipment engineering expertise and combines it with knowledge of the mining environment to design units that are fit for the job they need to do underground.

“The state of ramps is always an important factor in a mine’s haulage performance, and it becomes even more important in the context of full-fleet electrification that mining companies around the globe are actively pursuing,” suggests MacLean product management VP Maarten van Koppen.

“To maximise the benefits of down-ramp energy regeneration, mines need well-maintained roadbeds, and we’ve got the solution,” he concludes.