Emerson Exchange 365

Nickel and copper are used to make everything from cars and appliances to medical instruments and household batteries. As the only primary nickel mining operation in the U.S., Eagle Mine, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, plays a key role in bringing many of those products to market.

Getting all that metal out of the ground and turning it into usable product is no small feat. The mill operates continuously processing ore by crushing and grinding large pieces of rock down to the consistency of sand and filtering it through floatation cells until the final concentrate is ready to be smelted. Heavy industrial processing can wreak havoc on mechanical equipment—and on the maintenance crews who are tasked with keeping it all running safely.

At the 2015 Emerson Exchange Americas in Denver, Eagle Mine Maintenance Superintendent John Berglund explained how he and his team have met those maintenance challenges by introducing wireless asset health monitoring at the mine’s mill site.

The site, which was first used for iron processing in the 1970s, had sat idle for many years before undergoing a multi-million dollar renovation to bring it back into operation in 2014. Wireless vibration monitoring was not part of the original design scope, but as the project neared completion, Berglund decided his team could benefit from the added capability.

“Being able to immediately detect changes in equipment vibration is essential to our operation,” Berglund said. “For example, if a bearing on a ball mill fails without warning, it’s probably a two-day repair costing millions of dollars. We have dedicated vibration techs onsite, but they can’t be everywhere all the time. If a failure occurred at night or on a weekend when our vibration techs are off duty, there would be no one available to identify the failed bearing and shut down the equipment.”

After conducting field trials to determine network coverage requirements, Berglund’s team deployed four 1420 Smart Wireless Gateway units throughout the mill site.  To link the transmitters to the Smart Wireless mesh network, all transmitters were installed with either short or long range antennas. Transmitters were remotely placed in convenient locations away from the sensors mounted to the mill’s cone crushers and ball mill bearing housings.

The system is monitored remotely using AMS Device Manager, which provides historical process data, real-time analysis of vibration readings, and alarm management for all devices via WirelessHART protocol.

“We’ve found that aside from being useful for root-cause failure analysis, historical data also reinforces safety and operator accountability. If an event occurs, we can look back and see whether an operator acknowledged an alarm and how they responded. This helps to keep everyone focused and ready to take action if something goes wrong.”

While the setup has provided a measurable advantage in terms of maintenance costs, Berglund said that the decision to go with wireless mainly came from the need to respond quickly to production needs without impacting the mill’s commissioning schedule.  This was accomplished through reduced installation time by eliminating the need to run extensive wiring throughout the site.  

“Wireless offers a degree of flexibility that simply isn’t possible with traditional solutions. We started with about 20 transmitters onsite and now we’re up to 60. We can install and configure new devices and begin streaming data from them in a matter of hours. Having that level of adaptability and ease-of-use can be crucial, especially when you’re working against the clock.”