Zytronic’s rugged touch technology helps ‘chip away’ at mining bottlenecks

truck at mining checkpoint

As a supplier of building material and aggregates, Boral has over 100 huge quarries, mining stone, gravel and sand for a wide variety of construction projects. To put the scale of Boral’s mining output into context, during the construction of the Ichthys LNG onshore process facilities at Bladin Point near Darwin, Boral’s Northern Territory quarries supplied up to 5000 tpd of aggregate. With each of the huge mining trucks capable of carrying a payload of nearly 95 t, over 50 trucks filled up at the quarries each day for this project alone.

Efficiently and quickly logging and directing each truck to the correct loading station is crucial in modern, automated mining operations. Furthermore, monitoring the weights on each truck entering and leaving a site is essential. However, the traditional system for manually processing each truck at a standalone weigh-bridge and associated office, takes considerable time and, during busy periods, creates a huge bottleneck with trucks sometimes waiting hours.

Automation and the implementation of Industry 4.0 data and analytics are already helping transform Boral’s business, speeding up processes and reducing cost. The company’s vision for the Smart Quarry is to measure its output performance in dollars per hour instead of tonnage per hour. Important to this goal is for the company to simplify and speed up the throughput of trucks entering its quarries and mines and for this, they turned to technology integration company, Touch-Mate.

A specialist in self-service kiosks, TouchMate (headquartered in Brisbane) designs and produces its products in-house. With manufacturing facilities in both Australia and the US and already thousands of installations across the globe, the company has the experience and skills to install and commission a fully functioning kiosk with a proven track record of reliability and innovation.

The initial brief was to build a bespoke quarry truck ‘check-in’ kiosk that was rugged enough to operate reliably in the harshest of environments, as the units would be deployed in remote quarries across Australia, which has several different climate zones. In the Northern Territories, which has a more tropical influenced climate, summers can be hot and humid, while in the southern parts winters are sometimes rainy. Whereas in the outback areas of central Australia, temperatures can reach over 50°C. Furthermore, dirt, grit and dust whipped up from the quarry by passing trucks was also a factor to consider.

Designed to be used in these dusty and harsh environments, the check-in kiosks are fully sealed and IP66 rated. The internal temperatures are maintained by a ventilation system that integrates positive pressure filtration with a compact heat exchange unit. The electronic peripherals were sourced from specialist distributor JEA Technologies, of Melbourne.

JEA Technologies has been partnering with Zytronic as its distributor in Australia and New Zealand for over 12 years. Zytronic’s business is geared around the provision of durable, reliable and customisable touch technology.

Working closely with JEA Technologies, Zytronic designed a printed glass 19” ZyBrid® touch sensor that incorporates UV and IR filters to aid thermal management of the kiosk. A 6mm thick, thermally toughened glass was selected, which ensures optimum impact and scratch resistance and protects the underlying display. In addition, the specified glass incorporated an anti-glare etched finish to reduce reflections in the bright Australian sunshine.

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