product news
69
08.13
Monitoring the life cycle of mill liners has
been problematic and intangible in the past.
The recent introduction of the Hawkeye
®
monitoring system to the mill liner market has
therefore been met with great enthusiasm by
customers, says Multotec Rubber.
“Hawkeye
®
is a visual, simple
and easy to understand wear-
based monitoring system which
will enable end users to monitor
mill liner life cycles,” explains
Spike Taylor, MD of Multotec
Rubber.
Feedback from Multotec Rub-
ber’s customers focused on the
issues around accurately deter-
mining mill liner wear. In early
2011, Multotec Rubber commit-
ted to enhancing its web-based
Hawkeye
®
monitoring product to
overcome the inherent difficulties
associated with mill liners. The resultant sys-
tem effectively reduces the aggravation and
costs associated with mill liner shutdowns.
“This first-of-its-kindmonitoring programme
for mill liners has been developed in a man-
ner that allows a progressive visual display
of the liner profile. The replacement profile
is clearly shown in red in this visual display
and it facilitates the accurate planning of the
scheduled shutdown for replacement of the
liners,” says Taylor.
While the Hawkeye
®
monitoring system
Hawkeye
®
rolled out for mill liner market
has been running successfully for years on
screen panels in both South Africa and Aus-
tralia, the development of a system for mill
liner wear monitoring posed a number of
challenges.
“It was an exceptionally complex process
Hawkeye
®
allows the profile measurements
to be related directly to the tonnages treated
from data accumulated on the end user’s
SCADA system. “This is an important factor
when assessing the liner life cycle, as chang-
es in throughput will have an impact on the
replacement time frame,” adds Taylor.
Recording the liner life cycles will also
result in predictable shutdown
scheduling and eliminate the un-
planned shutdowns typically as-
sociated with unpredicted liner
failure.
“Additionally, this accurate
recording of the life cycle will
facilitate discussion of liner de-
sign changes between Multotec
Rubber personnel and the end
user, resulting in an improved life
of the mill liner. This high level of
monitoring allows accurate in-
formation to be retained and mill
specific liner solutions to be pro-
vided,” says Taylor.
“Because it is a web-based system, end
users have ready access to the mill liner data.
The system allows the customer to set pre-
determined levels of access, according to in-
dividual plant needs. For instance, the plant
personnel can have access to plant data
while management could have access to data
in more than one plant or even all the plants
across a group.”
Bernadette Wilson, Multotec Group,
tel (+27 11) 923-6193
Lifter bar profiles showing the progressive wear with the change out profile
in red as the last display.
to arrive at this simple solution,” Taylor points
out. “It is easy to monitor screen panels as
they remain in a specific position. However,
this is not the case with a mill liner. One needs
to consider that because of the rotation of the
mill, there is a lack of a specific base point for
recording of wear.”
After extensive engineering and testing,
the design of Hawkeye
®
– says Multotec Rub-
ber – was perfected to the point where it will
display lifter bar and shell plate wear profile
results that are easy to understand.
