BMT gains exclusive USA mining patent

BMT has announced today that ‘DuraCluster’, its innovative mining modification and repair scheme, has secured exclusive patent rights in the United States of America. International patent rights for the ‘DuraCluster’ modification scheme have already been granted in the global consultancy’s key territories of Canada, Australia, South Africa and India.

Proven to provide sustainable availability for all dragline assets with boom and mast tubular clusters, the flagship BMT ‘DuraCluster’ design modification has enabled mining operators to realise reductions in machine downtime and maintenance costs related to dragline tubular structures. The ‘DuraCluster’ scheme greatly improves the reliability of dragline booms which ultimately enhances machine productivity.

Charles Constançon, Director for Canadian Services, Critical Infrastructure Americas at BMT commented:

“With ‘DuraCluster’ offering the highest levels of lifecycle support and optimization of removal capacity at the lowest cost per tonne, our BMT dragline design scheme is one of the industry’s most sustainable mining solutions. By combining a low risk methodology and offsetting problematic boom designs, the BMT ‘DuraCluster’ modification allows operators to realise greater energy efficiencies.

“By implementing the ‘DuraCluster’ scheme, critical dragline boom performance and fatigue life of cluster joints on existing tubular dragline boom designs are substantially improved, allowing for a heavier duty cycle by increasing payloads and/or reducing cycle times.”

First introduced in 2013, the ‘DuraCluster’ design has been successfully implemented on several draglines across North America. These installations have proven ‘DuraCluster’s’ operational efficiencies, ease of installation and operational suitability for mining operators. Earlier installations on the ‘BI1570’ at Westmoreland Coal Company’s Paintearth mine, successfully reduced operational downtime and machine outage costs. Internationally, BMT has also partnered with ‘Warfab’ to supply the ‘DuraCluster’ as a turnkey industrial solution, including outage mitigation management, boom movement and fabrication installation support.