Creating a wear monitoring system for a mining company

The project story:

• Our multi-national client delivers a range of mining equipment, all of which suffers from wear issues in an aggressive environment. They provide sacrificial linings for this equipment, and it is critical to replace that lining before it is worn away, otherwise, there is a significant risk that the underlying equipment will be irreparably damaged
• Our client wanted to offer a “just in time” service to the mine owners, which required them to be able to remotely monitor the wear on their equipment. Existing solutions were either too expensive, or unsuitable for the aggressive mining environment

Sagentia Innovation was tasked to investigate this challenge:

• We ran ideation sessions, including client attendees, to create a long list of potential sensing solutions, which was then refined and filtered into a priority series of concepts
• We created working prototypes for the leading concept. Our prototypes were successfully integrated into a working slurry pump and are now a core component of our client’s monitoring solution