Ann: Coburn Project Commissioning of WCP Advancing Rapidly, page-95

@2ic, I will answer for relevance, as bigger machines do not translate to bigger performance (eg the Jacinth-Ambrosia 1,300 t/hr 1,000t behemoth). The last time these DMU's were built and commissioned was at Cataby for Iluka, 1,100t/hr and they bought two. From here is their declaration of performance, being the following table:

Coburn is setting about doing 23.4mtpa (per DFS) with one extra dozer trap. Those engineers with their big toys will tell you something has to be VERY DIFFERENT for adding 50% to the fleet to get 240% additional output. Maybe there is, but the Coburn ones appear to be physically the same, possibly have up-spec'd equip on board. In the absence of knowing what difference there is, but knowing you can't squeeze that much more performance out of a similar looking gizmo, the resource better be a whole lot easier to handle at the higher throughput site! So it is a reasonable area for concern and, quite frankly, the entire reason we have driven the creation of a fit-for-purpose machine for the industry as lower head grade ores are tackled by enthusiastic miners. You need this kind of paradigm shift in technology to credibly tackle such things. These are meant to be factual statements, not some glib advertorial!

Because of the amount of contractors that have worked at Cataby, it is an open secret that DMU's making nameplate is difficult, due to clay issues. But they have enough capacity up their sleeve to hit their mine plans as there are periods when neither are being relocated; undoubtedly they found a recipe for dozer push distances .vs. down time to relocate them. Coburn will have a lot less clay, but it needs to be close to nil for them to stay at 1,700t/hr nameplate, or they just won't cut it, either block or break. And this is why the machine design we put together is able to handle very high clay lump frequency with impunity. Just saying!

For anyone that hasn't seen it, attached public domain pics of the biggest we-need-to-go-a-different way gizmo ever to hit mineral sands: iluka-JacinthAmbrosia,SA-MiningUnit.pdf. Takes a fortnight to plan major relocations and is hardly friendly to use in uneven ground. But it got built and works as intended, and full credit to the team that pulled that one off!