If you can’t withstand the heat, get out of the kitchen! – by Juho

Warm regards from Asia-Pasific’s International Mining Exhibition. Now that the show is over it’s time to summarize the key outputs of last week. First of all, with more than 22 000 m2 of exhibition space and over 600 exhibitors AIMEX was an impressive show and certainly has it’s place among the largest mining exhibitions in the world. Despite deepening Eurozone crisis and continuing uncertainty over United States economy it was a great pleasure to see the amount of enthusiasm and “can do spirit” which was among the exhibitors and visitors at the Sydney Showground. Thanks to Australian resources industry, the country has been able to fight the Global Financial Crisis which is now strongly reflected in the value of the local currency – Aussie. Please forgive me, but as an old school type of economist I can not help myself being satisfied to see the benefits when country’s economy has a solid background in theresources industry (thanks to hard working drillers and diggers), instead of the dominating finance sector.

Exhibition had lots of news and technology to offer. Caterpillar’s Bucyrus buy, finalized just pre-show, was seen as an important step which will generate wealth and benefits for the companies, CAT’s distributors and end-customers. Technology development-wise, driverless vehicle and equipment strategy, where for instance haul trucks are computer controlled was one of the big topics at the show. With the help of sophisticated IC -technology, the fleet-owners and OEM’s have a chance to increase the real-time visibility of the key parametres, which enables a more accurate predictive maintenance, higher productivity and operator security.

Finally, let’s get to real deal – heat exchangers used in on- and underground mining vehicles. First of all, the Australian market has a lots of special characteristics which have to be well studied and understood before implementing non-value adding technical solutions to the market. We talked to numerous operators, fleet-owners, service managers, technical managers and their consensus of opinion was that long service distances, ambitious productivity targets, extreme ambient temperatures combined with challenging terrains favour copper-brass based radiators, charge-air-coolers and oil coolers. I was glad to see that more than 90% of the heat exchangers seen at the show where based on copper alloys. For me this is a clear message that the technology is evolving naturally to reflect local environmental and operational requirements.

Nevertheless, most of the products seen at the show where still soft-soldered, so there’s a great chance for almost factor 3 improvement in the joint strengths while moving from soft-soldering to brazing. Besides CuproBraze Alliance, there where companies already introducing CuproBraze product portfolio to the market. So, if you demand robust structures which can withstand the vibrations, heatload and allow operator friendly field-maintenance – it’s time to turn to CuproBraze technology.

Finally, on behalf of CuproBraze Alliance, we want to express our thanks to Reed Mining Events for organizing such a great show, and our visitors for their visits to our booth!