CASAR has always been
known for the extraordinary
performance of its
mining ropes. Now they
have set a new world record in
Australia’s Northparkes mine,
establishing a new milestone
in the process. After 652,239
completed cycles, a service life
of 46 months and more than 22
million tons of moved rock, the
Turboplast M used for the work
was gracefully retired. The rope
was discarded according to plan
in mid-January 2015 under the
supervision of Roger Smith, an
experienced expert for hightech
mining ropes in the service
of CASAR, and Alexander Fäh,
sales engineer for mining ropes.
The Northparkes mine is located
in a rural area of the state of New
South Wales, around 450 km
to the west of Sydney. At the
end of 2013, the Chinese company
China Molybdenum Co.,
Ltd. took over 80 % of the shares of the Rio Tinto Group, while the remaining
20 % are still owned by the Japanese
Sumitomo Group. Gold and high-quality copper
concentrate are mined and extracted in the
Northparkes mine. The hoisting machine is a
ground mounted friction winder with a motor
power of 3 MW which transports a maximum payload of 16.5t at a speed of 15.3 m/s from a depth of 590 m to the top. Four hoist ropes with a diameter
of 32 mm and
a length of 750 m
are used, two ropes
right hand Lang’s lay
and two ropes left hand
Lang’s lay.
When underground mining in 1997, the originally triangular
strand ropes reached service
life of around 100,000 working
cycles. The rotation-free 19x7 hoist ropes that
were subsequently used only had a very short
service life so that the "rst set of CASAR ropes
was installed in 2000. This set increased the
service life to 245,000 cycles and only had
to be discarded due to mechanical damage
caused by rockfall. The following change to a
competitor caused nothing but problems for
Northparkes and left them with a short rope
service life which is why the company went
back to CASAR. Since going back to CASAR,
3 additional sets of CASAR ropes have been
used, and with each set it was possible to increase
the service life further. With the 4th set,
CASAR managed to increase their own world
record of 485,300 cycles on a friction winch,
which they had only in fact broken with the
3rd set, to an incredible 652,239 cycles.
This performance ought to be rated even
higher as important parameters such as
speed, payload, acceleration and utilisation
were increased over time, while maintenance
measures were reduced. Normally all
this would rather lead to a reduced service
life. However, with an intensive examination
of the discarded ropes and a comprehensive
study of the relevant damage mechanisms,
the rope experts of CASAR managed to continuously
develop the rope for Northparkes,
successfully managing to prevent the rope
reaching discard maturity prematurely.
When the rope was changed in January,
again a CASAR Turboplast M was installed to
con"rm its world record performance. In the
long term they hope to exceed this record
again signi"cantly, aiming for a service life of
800,000 cycles. This should be achieved by using
Turboplast MF for the sixth set of CASAR
ropes, a rope which is even better adapted
to the requirements and circumstances on a
friction winder.
For this reason the now discarded world
record rope has been transported back to
Germany for intensive examination by CASAR.
This is the only way to guarantee a continuous
improvement of our product and to come a bit
closer to our goal. The relevant managers at
Northparkes will also be present during the rope
examination.