The Bucket Shop, a Timmins-based supplier of buckets for loaders, excavators and shovels, has introduced a heavy-duty cast lip system designed to provide customers with three times more life for a 20 per cent cost premium.
The TBS 1000 HiPER Lip System incorporates Canadian Wear Technologies’ Abreco laminated white iron plate.
“We started two to and a half years ago on the HiPER line product with a focused study on wear patterns,” said Bucket Shop general manager Paul Woodward.
“Cast lip assemblies are ground engaging tools subject to the same type of failures, so we made a concerted effort to focus on lifecycle improvement. It has been a very stagnant market. There hasn’t been a lot of R&D, so what we’re doing is new thinking. We’re pioneers bringing this new technology to market.”
Abreco is a laminated white iron product that offers superior wear characteristics,” said Woodward. “It’s used in mill operations – anywhere there’s moderate impact to high abrasion, so we took this metallurgy and we’ve incorporated it into all of our castings. There’s a bit of a special recipe going on with the lip, but the real secret is the placement and utilization of the Abreco product.”
The Bucket Shop also offers customers the option of installing Abreco chok bars as an outside corner wear solution on the underside of a bucket because “there are two areas that cause a bucket to come to surface –it’s either the heel castings wear out or the lip fails, so we have focused on these two primary areas,” said Woodward.
Abreco plate is a laminate of extremely abrasion resistant, high-alloy, high-carbide, chrome-moly white iron that is metallurgically bonded to a mild steel backing, which allows for weldability. Abreco plate has a hardness rating of 712 Brinell.
The Bucket Shop also offers a two-piece bucket design, which allows the rear end to remain mounted to the loader while the front end is refurbished.
“When we take the two piece bucket and we incorporate the HiPER series of castings, we end up with a win-win scenario that’s very cost-effective,” said Woodward. “It reduces the frequency of changeouts for underground operations, which increases productivity and uptime.
“It’s all about moving tons in this game, so we want a product on the ends of those buckets – the business end – that is going to offer good penetration, while at the same time reducing tire wear and machine wear and tear.”
The two-piece bucket design is ideal for captive underground operations where cage restrictions require conventional one-piece units to be cut, hoisted to surface for refurbishment and then reassembled underground. Refurbishing a one-piece bucket ties up the skip and requires two days to reassemble.
When it’s time to refurbish a two-piece bucket, the front end is simply detached and a new one bolted on. The whole operation takes two men between two and three hours versus the 32 hours it generally takes to unpin, cut down, transport and reassemble a one-piece bucket, according to Woodward.
The Bucket Shop is the flagship operation of a family-owned business that also includes Steeltec, a fabrication and field services division, and United Equipment Rentals. United Supply, a wholesale/retail business serving the mining, forestry and construction sectors, was also part of the family business, but was recently sold.
The company is in the process of a major expansion and plans to relocate to a new 55,000-square-foot building by September 2016. The new facility will boast state-of-the-art pattern cutting, brakes, manipulators and a 60-tonne capacity crane.
The Bucket Shop group of companies employs approximately 100 people and serves customers across Northern Ontario and into Quebec and Manitoba. It has also exported product to Mexico and Guatemala.
Woodward is optimistic about cracking the Sudbury market with its new lip system.
“We’re very pleased to be bringing this solution to the Sudbury Basin,” he said. “That’s something new for us. There’s nothing but opportunity right now. We’re being very well-received because we’re bringing innovative ideas forward.”
