In this case study, a Chilean mining maintenance contractor used HD condition monitoring technology to measure the mechanical condition of crowd drive bearings and gears in an electric rope shovel and discovered early-stage damage on the outer ring and rolling elements of a brand new bearing.

In conjunction with servicing components for electric rope shovels, the contractor performs vibration measurements as recommended by the manufacturer. However, since they had found on several occasions that these measurements alone do not provide sufficiently reliable results, they started to also measure with HD technology. As a result, the contractor now achieves better quality control of their service work and more accurate analysis results, which benefits all parties, not least when it comes to warranties.

The crowd drive is a technically complex piece of equipment. Multiple bearings and gears in a small space may lead to crosstalk during measurement. The fact that the crowd drive has a reduction gearbox is another challenge. HD technology overcomes these factors and is thus an ideal supplement to the recommended vibration measurements.