Coal Mining

Customer
Coal Mining Equipment Rebuilder

Application
Various Sized Hydraulic Cylinders

Background
As a coal mining equipment rebuilder, this company employs 3-4,000 people throughout the United States. After a recent reorganization, all roof support hydraulic cylinders and coal-cutting machine hydraulic cylinders will now be rebuilt at one location on the East Coast instead of at the original six locations.

Problem
This location was cleaning only 3-4 various sized cylinders per day. With the reorganization, the quantity of cylinders would increase to 20-25 per day. These various cylinders measured between 31" tall and 68" tall, had O.D.ís between 4 1/4" to 18", and weighed 1,000 to 1,500 lbs each. The old method of washing utilized a hand-held pressure washer. This process was taking up to 2 hours per cylinder, was labor intensive and made collecting the contaminate difficult, if not impossible. An aqueous system was needed to eliminate the labor involved, collect the contaminated discharge, and be capable of washing all the internal cavities of several different sized cylinders concurrently. Lastly, due to their size and weight, the cylinders had to be loaded with a crane and fixtured in place.

Solution
A unique front-loading machine with 90" inside vertical clearance and increased weight capacity of 5,000 lbs. with a fixture (pictured to the left) designed and fabricated to hold three (3) cylinders at a time, regardless of length or width. In order to effectively clean the main cavity of the cylinder and the hydraulic fluid reservoir, Better Engineering designed a system with an indexing turntable that positions the cylinders directly over special spray manifolds.
System: A F-6000-P with 90" IVC, increased weight capacity of 5,000 lbs., a custom hydraulic cylinder fixture and indexing turntable (60" diameter).

Note
Cleaning time has been reduced from 2 hours per cylinder to 15 minutes for 3 cylinders.

8/16/99