Symboticware Inc., a Sudbury mining supplier specializing in data acquisition and integration technologies, has forged a relationship with a large tire manufacturer to collect tire pressure and vehicle performance data from 12 vehicles at a U.S. mine.
Using the company’s Symbot, a ruggedized device that collects, formats, stores and transmits data, the manufacturer is able to monitor tire performance in relation to the vehicle’s payload and operational metrics.
“Tire pressure and temperature are critical,” said Joe Gladu, Symboticware’s vice president, mining business unit. “If a tire is underinflated, there’s a risk of running the tire to failure” – an expensive proposition given the cost of off-theroad tires used in both surface and underground mining operations.
“Tires for an underground loader – for example, a CAT 2900 - cost anywhere from $12,000 to $16,000,” noted Gladu. “If you look at an extreme example of a 400-tonne haul truck in Alberta’s tar sands, those tires cost anywhere from $80,000 to $120,000, so having information about how your tires are performing is crucial.”
Real time
Most vehicles today, including mobile equipment used in the mining industry, have onboard tire pressure monitoring sensors and engine control modules (ECMs), but the data isn’t always available in real-time and, if it is, there’s no guarantee an operator will pay attention to it.
“The benefit of the Symbot is that it provides real-time connectivity, or near real-time connectivity. It collects the data and makes it available to a number of different stakeholders, including maintenance and operations personnel,” said Gladu.
“If there’s a problem with a vehicle, it’s important to know in real time. It doesn’t do any good to know after the fact.”
The Symbot makes use of WiFi connectivity underground to transmit data to a central respository, where it can be displayed and trigger alerts. On surface, it can also integrate with satellite and 3G cellular communication networks.
“Local alerts from tire pressure monitoring sensors are great if the operator actually acknowledges them and does something about them, but there’s a lot of pressure on the operator to achieve bonus and, sometimes, they just ignore these warnings,” said Gladu.
“The Symbot takes it a step further by also alerting the maintenance department or the production supervisor and lets them know there’s a problem with that vehicle. They can radio the operator and say, ‘You’re critically low. If you keep going, you’re going to destroy that tire.’”
Gladu expects the pilot with the tire manufacturer to lead to more deployments of the Symbot technology.
Deployments
Symbots have been deployed by Vale, Glencore’s Sudbury Integrated Nickel Operations and by a gold mine in Timmins. Other sales have been made to Compañía Minera Milpo’s Lindo open pit mine in Peru and to Secure Energy, an oilfield services company based in Calgary. “If you don’t have data, you’re making decisions blindly,” said Gladu. “With the Symbot, a mining company has greater insight into what’s going on inside its operation. It allows them to know if they’re working as efficiently and productively as they can.”
One of the main benefits of the Symbot is its ability to interface with a wide variety of vendor equipment.
Many mining companies have mixed fleets, including vehicles from Caterpillar, Atlas Copco, Sandvik and Maclean Engineering.
“The Symbot interfaces with pretty well anyone’s OEM vehicles,” said Gladu. “We can talk to them all. That’s our strength.”
Collaborations and partnerships with Schneider Electric, Toromont CAT, Wajax Power Systems and OSIsoft, a developer of data historian software widely used in the mining industry, have been critical to the company’s success.
In October, Symboticware won the Northern Ontario Business Export Award in recognition of its achievements.
