Undercarriage

Metco Joining & Cladding provides unique new solutions to a common challenge in the mining industry: Worn components in the undercarriage that reduce the effectiveness of the crawler, increase fuel costs, reduce traction and ultimately lead to unsafe operating conditions.

Increased Efficiency Results in Lowered Cost per Ton of Ore

Crawler undercarriage components such as links, pins, bushings, sprockets, rollers, idlers, shoes and frames are subjected to:

High stress gouging
High stress abrasion
Side loading
Shock loading conditions
High vibration
High and low operating temperatures
Corrosion

Components with low performance life increase operational cost and add to inventory requirements for parts and back-up equipment. While high-performance materials and overlays are a proven solution to protect these components, they require special processes and equipment to apply them. Mining equipment OEMs, spare parts manufacturers and MRO (Maintenance and Repair Operations) service companies need an alternative solution with easier accessibility. Metco Joining & Cladding can provide it.

Easily Applied, High-performance Alloys for Undercarriage Components

Our material innovations for undercarriage components can be applied using conventional GMAW (MIG), Plasma Transferred Arc (PTA) and laser welding equipment. These high-performance alloys maintain component geometry and efficiency. For example, Metco Joining & Cladding's manganese steel weld overlay — Metco 8233 — provides hardness as high as HRC 45 to 55 (as-welded) and HRC 60 (work-hardened).

Metco 8226, which provides weld deposits with a very high, as-welded hardness of HRC 63 to 68 is an excellent choice for protecting quenched and tempered steel grouser track pad components.

This way, these new materials outperform conventional manganese steel weld overlays.

High wear resistance and high impact resistance increase component life by 30% to 400%
Less frequent changeout of components reduce machine downtime, lowers labor costs and result in lower overall changeout costs
Hardfacing maintains the design geometry of component. This sustains equipment and traction efficiency and improves safety
Lower Cost Per Ton of Ore: Increased efficiencies, lower changeout costs and reduced logistical burden result in operational costs per hour and lower cost per ton of ore processed
Our material is easier to apply, as only one material is needed and can be applied using standard GMAW equipment

Customer Case:

We tested two of our newly developed materials in different mines:

Metco 8233 was applied on Hardox base material on the tractors of excavators in a copper mine in Latin America and a US gold mine Metco 8226 was tested on the same equipment in an iron mine in Australia.

In all cases, the parts welded with Metco 8233 or Metco 8226 achieved double the lifetime — regardless of the different abrasive environments in the mines. Thus, the excavators could reduce the number of overhauls and grousers could be replaced during the normal, preventative planned maintenance. This led to significantly higher quantities of excavated material and reduced costs for maintenance and replacement of the grousers.

Track pads with Metco 8226 hardfaced grousers