A SERIES of seven slew drives, engineered in Australia for safety, durability and performance are being installed at a Queensland port to help power a coal ship loader.
The Bonfiglioli 316 planetary bevel gearbox slew drives have several special features and parts designed and manufactured in Australia, complemented by parts sourced from Bonfiglioli’s headquarters in Italy.
Bonfiglioli’s customer application engineering team specially designed the drives, which the customer (which cannot be named due to commercial confidentiality reasons) is to use to power coal ship loaders’ booms at the port.
Three drives are to be used on each of the two booms, with one spare always available to minimise downtime and production losses.
“We designed the drives to boost efficiency, consume less energy and provide ultimate reliability,” said lead project engineer, Bonfiglioli, Harry Singh.
Several components of Bonfiglioli’s customised slew drives were designed and manufactured in Australia to meet unique customer requirements
“We had a quick turnaround time from receiving the order to delivery, to have the drives delivered during a scheduled shutdown window. This was a big challenge, because we sourced only high-quality parts throughout the entire drive, which often means longer lead times.”
“Additionally, despite engineering complexity and specifying all top quality parts from Australia or Italy, Bonfiglioli’s drives were still more cost-effective than the older drives they were replacing.”
Bonfiglioli slew drives, with torque outputs of up to 130,000 Newton metres, are designed to be industry benchmarks of safety, efficiency and reliability.
Bonfiglioli Australia managing director Malcolm Lewis said although these slew drives were highly customised, they were all designed to the top quality standards of the international Bonfiglioli Group.
The Bonfiglioli drives are to be delivered in two stages, the first of which was recently completed.
The first stage involved four drives that were installed in September during a planned shutdown.
