PRODUCTS & SERVICES
HORTON
61
WHEN AN EXCAVATOR IN AN AUSTRALIAN MINE STARTED OVERHEATING, THE
SOLUTION WAS FOUND IN THE DEPLOYMENT OF HORTON’S EFFICIENT FANS
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iVTInternational.com November 2019
About 200 miles north of Sydney with a
landscape punctuated by vineyards, the Hunter
Valley is perhaps best known as Australian wine country.
But it’s also mine country.
Coal excavation is the area’s top economic driver, and
companies extract from open-cut mines throughout the
region. Facing harsh conditions that include blistering
temperatures above 38°C, the region’s miners source
thousands of dollars’ worth of raw coal every minute.
Assuming, that is, their heavy-duty equipment operates
at peak performance.
Recently at one key site, a Cat 6060 excavator
experienced frequent overheating issues. When ambient
temperatures climbed above 30°C, the machine’s four
hydraulic fans were unable to provide su cient cooling,
causing the 6060 to shut down through overheating. As
a result Horton Inc, a global provider of engine cooling
systems based out of Minnesota, and local distributor
Norman G Clark, teamed up to craft a solution.
Maintain uptime
In the competitive commodities landscape, every
second of uptime is precious. Excavators transfer giant
loads of coal into mine haul trucks approximately every
two minutes. Every load is worth tens of thousands of
dollars when it reaches the top of the pit.
Most mining rms don’t maintain spare excavators so
when one goes down for even 10 minutes, it can cost
upwards of $100,000 in lost pro t. Australia’s
environmental regulations add to the challenge. In the
Hunter Valley, all vehicles require sound attenuation
packages that put major restrictions on cooling systems.
Keep it cool and quiet
Norman G Clark has served as a licensed Horton
distributor and manufacturer in Australia for 56 years.
Together, Norman G Clark technical sales engineer Jack
Clark and chief engineer David Kosnar joined Horton
vice president of o -highway sales Dirk Kreunen for a
visit to the mine site to review its applications and issues.
The customer requested at least 10% more air ow
with no signi cant increase in hydraulic pressure and
thus engine noise. Kreunen, lead sales engineer Neal
Shawaluk, application engineer Justin Polak and the rest
of Horton’s o -highway team promptly began testing
potential solutions in its Roseville, Minnesota research
and development center. Norman G Clark, meanwhile,
RIGHT: The Horton
HM1400 fan
BELOW: provided continuous feedback to both Horton and the
end customer throughout the process.
The group’s task was to optimize a more e cient fan
to achieve increased air ow without making the
excavator’s inner workings any louder.
Maximize airfl ow
Horton recommended four HM1400 fans to replace the
original fans supplied by Caterpillar. Following this
selection, further testing was conducted both before
and after installation to determine how e ective the
new setup could be.
“We plotted the HM1400 fan against the original fan
and determined that we could gain a fair amount of air
ow with minimal extra power draw,” says Shalawuk. “We
knew we needed to have a robust fan for this type of
mining application, so the HM1400 was a really good t.”
Since the changeover to Horton fans, the customer
has yet to experience an excavator shutdown, despite
temperatures often climbing past 43°C for 7-14 days
in a row.
The excavators had previously been achieving
approximately 33,900 cubic feet of air ow per minute.
With Horton’s fans, they now push through around
38,150 cubic feet per minute, a 12.5% increase.
Furthermore, there was no lift in hydraulic
pressure, and sound testing revealed an actual
drop in noise of about two decibels – a result
of fans spinning slower, using the automaticallycontrolled
drive. iVT
Author: Phil Ervin, content marketing manager, Horton Inc.
Beating the heat
Horton’s fans
were put to use in a Cat
6060 mining excavator
/pivt
/iVTInternational.com
