Beyond buckets and bodies
DT HiLoad specialises in the design and manufacture of dump truck bodies and mining buckets for the resources sector, with a skilled and committed workforce to deliver specific solutions for clients.
General manager Glenn Brearey said the company had positioned itself as a market leader in the sector by identifying new and innovative ways of solving common problems backed by exceptional customer service across the value cycle.
“Innovation is at our core and safety is a priority,” Mr Brearey said.
“We focus on quality customer support and innovation – taking products further to maximise our customer’s productivity and payloads.
“Recently we designed a super lightweight Hercules body for an autonomous truck for an iron ore miner in the Pilbara.
“The Hercules body design was specific and customised to ensure that weight reduction did not affect the overall wear requirements or durability of the body.
“The trial data we have received shows the Hercules body exceeded all our expectations and has given us a new direction of improvement based on our proven existing design.”
Safety is a key driver for innovation for the company.
“We have developed a patented pin insertion tool to improve safety when removing and installing the Hercules bodies,” Mr Brearey said.
The pin insertion tool addressed a long-known safety issue in mining maintenance - removing the need to work under a suspended load.
It reduced the need for manual handling and exposure to strains and other potential injuries when installing pivot pins.
“The wireless technology and some basic hydraulic principals remove the worker from a potentially dangerous position,” Mr Brearey said.
“Not only can we increase worker safety around that task, we can increase the value proposition for the product.”
The company is working on a range of high wearing, high strength steel as a natural evolution of its products.
“The material options we are working on will go in specific areas of our products where the wear characteristics of the materials matter most,” Mr Brearey said.
“We believe this will give our clients different options for material selection in key areas of the Barracuda buckets and Hercules bodies. “This will further improve our products’ reliability and abrasion resistance and will aid weight reduction.”
Engineering and more
DT HiLoad doesn’t just do buckets and bodies.
The company can cater for a range of engineering requirements.
Mr Brearey said the company knows the importance of safety in product design.
“One of our strengths is our ability to custom manufacture our product to suit the specific mine requirements,” Mr Brearey said.
“These needs are not a one size fits all – we understand that.
“Innovation is at our core and safety is a priority.
“We use our engineering skills to make sure that our products are manufactured to the highest standards, are site-specific, and also adaptable to the varying safety regulations.”
The company’s engineering capabilities include using Finite Element Analysis (FEA) software to analyse how the products will react in real world forces.
DT HiLoad also use Discrete Element Method (DEM) to determine the behaviour of geomaterials such as iron ore and coal.
This method is used to analyse the flow behaviour and related wear characteristics.
Engineering manager Tom Smith said the engineering team frequently noticed areas where safety improvement could be made, including in kits for wear management.
“As bodies wear from the repeated dumping of product you need to install a wear solution to ensure that the tray thickness is maintained,” Mr Smith said.
“Often this would be plate liners which are heavy steel plates which often need rolling or bending, which leads to all sorts of issues with manual handling and stored energy risks.
“Our solution to this is our patented Hex Tile technology as wear protection which dramatically increases safety on site.
“They are up to 60pc lighter than traditional steel plate liners when installed.”
There’s also no chance of stored energy issues.
Often wear plates have potential energy or residual energy when they are welded or forced down, so when those welds are cut, the plates can potentially spring back, which is a real risk to the maintenance teams working on the tray.
“The hex tiles are smaller, they basically sit in the palm of your hand,” Mr Smith said.
“That’s just one example of how we engineer safe and efficient product designs – it’s at the heart of what we do.”