Big bladed Cats push the coal “Down Under” (Blog look back)

by Nick Drew | Fri 07 Oct 2016

Big bladed Cats push the coal “Down Under” (Blog look back)

Some time ago we received some more cracking photos from our friend Gary Steen in Australia, featuring a specially adapted Caterpillar D11R Carry Dozer in action.

Gary tells us that there are 4 of these giant Cat dozers at work on the Roche Thiess Linfox (RTL) operation at the Yallourn Coal Mine site in the Latrobe Valley. Each machine is fitted with a custom made 94 cubic yard blade which are believed to be the largest coal blades ever built by Caterpillar, in fact they are the largest coal blades in operation anywhere in the world. rtl-d11r-at-yallourn-4

At 3.63m high the special purpose blade is capable of moving 70 tonnes of brown coal per push. The dozers are also fitted with GPS guidance and on board survey capability which is downloaded from a central computer server. This GPS guidance is needed because the operators cannot see anything in front of the blade as it is so big! The material is pushed into giant feeder breakers which then feed the coal onto a face conveyor system. rtl-d11r-at-yallourn-2

RTL developed this innovative technique which saw the replacement of traditional bucket wheel excavators with these Cat D11R Carry Dozers pushing to the feeders. rtl-d11r-at-yallourn-3

The technique has provided a less capital intensive mining method and ensures 100 per cent coal supply reliability. In this last shot take a look at the tall stop sign on top of the feeder breaker hopper- that is placed high so the operator can see it, but apparently on occasions they do still run into it! rtl-d11r-machine-2

The Feeder Breakers at Yallourn have been purpose built to a design developed in the Yallourn Mine and have been designed to deliver up to 3,000 tonnes per hour onto the conveyor belt system. Once again we thank Gary for sharing these photos with us here on the Digger Man Blog.

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