Summary

A Queensland coal mine sought to extend the life of their drag chain on its BE 1370 dragline. The mine has extremely abrasive conditions which led to only 6 million BCM from existing sets of hard-faced drag chain. In addition, the mine wanted to eliminate all unplanned downtime associated with chain maintenance and the added cost of hard facing the drag chain.

The local ESCO Supply and Service representative proposed the new ProSeries™ dragline drag chain to address their need for improved performance. Fully cast in premium proprietary ESCO alloys, the ProSeries™ chain provides up to a 12% increase in bite wear and a 14% increase in wear metal compared to competitive fitments. Once installed, the set of ProSeries drag chain outperformed the previous chain, delivering 7.5m BCM of run time over a 7-month period – recording approximately 3.69 million drag meters.

The performance far exceeded the competitive fitment and provided significantly lower cost with the elimination of hard facing. In consideration of the exceptional performance, the mine is looking into additional ProSeries fitments across its rigging assembly packages.

ProSeries chain achieved 7.5m BCM against the 6m BCM of hard-faced chain
Operated for 3,080 hours over 7 months and approximately 3.69 million drag meters
Zero unplanned downtime due to drag chain