Challenge:

A leading iron ore mining company in Western Australia faced a persistent issue: chronic conveyor pulley bearing failures on their critical overland conveyor system. These failures caused significant downtime and substantial financial losses due to unplanned replacements.

The DASH Engineering Solution:

In 2018, DASH Engineering tackled this challenge by investigating the root cause of the failures. Through analysis and testing, we identified contamination ingress via housing seals as the culprit. This led to the development of the innovative SAPO® seal, designed to address this specific problem.

Real-World Results:

• Reduced Downtime: The SAPO® seal effectively minimises contamination, leading to significant reductions in unplanned downtime.
• Extended Pulley Life: By exceeding the historical Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF), the SAPO® seal translates to substantial cost savings.
• Over $2 Million Saved in 2023: Tracking a sample of nearly 100 pulleys, the client achieved a remarkable cost avoidance of over $2 million in 2023 alone, due to extended pulley life.

Continuing Partnership:

The success of the SAPO® Seal has solidified our partnership with the client. We continue to roll out the seal across their operations and collaborate on further reliability improvement initiatives.