There's nothing wrong with the setup, I've seen many shovel's and hoe's dig down haul roads before. Caterpillar's match for a 5230 was the 785. And keep in mind, because he's digging on a steep grade he has to sacrifice full buckets for swing power.
Also keep in mind, what you see here is a project that took about a day to complete. Once the shovel dug the haul road down further to the bottom of the shot, he leveled out again. Normally you want a perfect setup, but in mining things arn't always under ideal conditions.
That’s because the trucks are climbing a steep grade and that’s also why the shovel is taking half buckets because it’s hard on the swing motor to swing the shovel with a full bucket uphill. Overloading the trucks in this case would hurt production because: 1)It's harder on them, 2)it would take them longer to climb the grade which means they wouldn't be able to get back to the shovel as fast, and 3)on a grade this steep, material would be falling out the back of the box all over the haul road.
Did you not read the description? It's all explained there. He is facing downhill on a 15% grade, which makes in very hard on the swing motors to swing the shovel uphill at that steep angle with a full heavy bucket. To help the shovel swing faster, he had to reduce the amount of material in the bucket. There were a few times with a full bucket where he had to swing the right and then back to the left to build up power.
Thanks for posting this video. I would have "liked" it, since I have worked with heavy equipment (dad & his bros had the Allis-Chalmers dealership & machine shop in town). That 5230 has had a serious career, with so many broken track ends from working in rock, but it's still breaking up rock with the big dogs! May your equipment always work.
PBS Coal wasn't known for taking care of its iron. I was in sales at the Cat dealer that handled them and all their iron was run beyond service intervals.
To be fair, all they really did (in regards to their biggest mining equipment) was buy out Bucyrus. The way I understood it, all they did was transfer the company over and basically re-badge everything as Cat. Maybe I misunderstood how the acquisition went down. If you look at the photos on the website, a lot of the equipment in the promo photos is Bucyrus stuff that's been Photoshopped Cat yellow.
Great video, I was watching are RH400's doin the same thing at work the other day, he was doin great until one of the 797's back dulies went off the edge of his cut, they had to fill the cut back in for the safety of the haul truck before using two D11's to cable it out.
I thought he was moving sort of slowly there. Thanks for the explanation. I didn't figure that you guys would turn a lousy operator loose with a huge piece of equipment like this. Great vid!
I seen the results of a High Wall Cave-in at Homestake Goldmine in Lead, SD. It was one of the first 5230's, one heck of a machine! Squashed it good though, when a huge boulder came off the high wall, and hit a Triple 777 hard to! The Operator of the Shovel didn't make it. Mining is a dangerous business!
I was just asking myself about speed till I read your description fully. Hard to tell how steep that ramp is from the camera angle...but I've been on enough truck/loader crews to know what machines go through...makes me miss excavating BIG TIME!!!!!
Great video! We all know that these Cat 5000 series excavators were far from the industry standard ie: The Demag & O&Ks, Hitachis etc. Thats why cat withdrew them from the market as they could not compete with the REAL shovels in the heavy weight classes. Now Cat is doing what has always done & bought the technology as in the Bucyrus/terex deal. What else is new Caterpillar??? Thanks for the great video PA & keep them coming
Yes, I understand your reply perfectly, thank you for your time. I just had not appreciated that they were working a steep grade from the video. However, "ramping down" should have given me a clue ! I drove heavy plant for 30 years, hence the interest...
Once she is leveled off in the shot the cycles will get shorter. Here I the Islands we just use trucks, loader & dozer...our jobsites aren't that big & the contracts are never big enough to bring in a 5230 Dipper... But it's fun to watch if you love machinery...
try swinging and curling and opening your clam all at the same time counter swing while at the dove tail you will gain a lot of time right there also when comingout of the truck try having your bucket already set up to dig always have your next move planned. nice shovel though we run hitachi 5500-6 thats a big machine
Thanks Justin a awesome digger so much power there looks like a great machine to operate. I would love to operate it for a day what a thrill that would be wow.
Cats first atttempt in building a large face shovel before they bought over the O&K/ Terex/ Bucyrus line and came out with a new flleet of big shovels up to the RH400, with possibly an RH500 design coming soon to fill their biggest 797 trucks in about three passes!
If you don't keep up with proper maintenance you'll run one of these machines into the ground but even with proper maintenance you will always get some downtime. There’s no real answer for how long a hydraulic shovel will last on a job; that all depends on its owners. Some companies replace machines every so many years while others will run machines for 20+ years. I’ve been around some machines over 30 years old that run like new. Good maintenance is the key to a healthy machine
Fantastic vantage point you found there! Never seen any of the CAT 5000-series before but was lucky enough to get a look at a CAT 6030 which as I understand it replaces the O&K/Terex/Bucyrus RH120-series of machines. What truck size is the 5230 designed to work with?
If it ain't broke you don't fix it...If you ever own a machine that cost a million dollars; you'll understand that pretty doesn't make money...This equipment follows maintenance schedules and this one is near its time...
Most diggers/shovels and excavators are a bit tippy when working from the side but this beauty never cares where it works from. Oh how I love BIG and this one certainly suits that bill eh, LOL.
Thanks. People think mining is picture perfect production. I haven't been on a single mining site where it was a perfect setup everyday. Digging on a slope like this is slow and hard on everything. But it needs to be done
shame that Cat no longer make machines of this size and calibre, the 50xx series always seem in demand second hand/used. especially for demo conversions. be interesting to see what the recently purchased terex / o&k products look like with cat yellow and branding???
Ever heard of Bucyrus International Inc in Wisconsin? They were just bought out by CAT for $8.8 Billion. Bucyrus was the company that built Big Muskie walking dragline and other large mining equipment.
At least the cab is on the left so you can see the truck, our komatsu shovels are all on the right and you can't see the truck til the clam is halfway over the tray, load the other way and the truck cab is on the offside
@localcrew Well a 5230 isn't that fast of a machine to begin with. But yeah digging on any steep incline like this and trying to swing uphill is harder on the swinger. Now when he's on a level surface the swing speed is fine.
@mrbluesky2050 Apparently you've been living under a rock for the last few months lol. Have you been on Cat's website to see what the shovels, drags, drills, etc look like? There have already been a few shovels built and put into service; one of them just arrived here a couple months ago. I recommend you follow our Facebook page for news and updates!
Drop cut is always hard on the swing portion, his set up is fine and getting decent buckets. 5230 was not that bad, go try a PC5500 from a mechanical point of view, been around a lot longer than 5000 series and an absolute POS
