Bengalla's 'black boxes' solve longstanding mystery

A simple black box has solved a longstanding mystery on Bengalla’s dump trucks, getting parts to speak the same language and saving more than $400,000 a year.

Bengalla mechanical reliability engineer Troy Whitcombe said the 10 EH4500 electric drive dump trucks would often display ‘data link errors’ on the dashboard, indicating the trucks’ three control units were not communicating with each other.

“The mine formed a defect elimination team to get to the bottom of the issue, and found the problem was caused by a scrambling of electrical signals in the trucks’ communication systems,” Troy said.

“By wiring a data isolator – a small black box – into the trucks’ systems, we were able to get rid of the disturbance and prevent data link errors.”

Troy said that by fixing the errors, Bengalla has saved $405,000 a year based on the cost to replace a dump truck of $440 per hour.

“Each time a data link error was displayed on the dashboard, the operator had to park the truck and restart it, losing about 10 minutes in operating time,” Troy said.

“These errors have been occurring since the first truck of this type was commissioned in 2000. During the first four months of 2008 alone 228 individual data link errors occurred.

“Failure to stop the truck would have compromised the operator’s safety and gone against the mine’s safety procedures, as a data link error means the truck’s communication system would not be functioning correctly to be able to alert the operator to any actual issues with the truck.”

The defect elimination team included Troy, electrical engineering specialist John Martin, electrical maintenance technicians Kent Flaherty and Justin Miller and representatives from original equipment manufacturers Siemens and Hitachi.

“The team was very enthusiastic about getting to the bottom of the problem,” Troy said.

“By working collaboratively with people from Bengalla and the original equipment manufacturers, we have now solved the mystery for all EH4500s.”