This customer’s fleet of Caterpillar 777 trucks, operating in a large central Alberta coal mine, was experiencing expensive brake and cylinder damage. The damage was caused by iron contamination from hydraulic pump failures. In these trucks, hydraulic oil circulates as a coolant throughout the four-wheel wet brakes. Contamination in the oil gets trapped, embeds into the brake components, and cannot be flushed out. When the machines are put back into service following a hydraulic system repair, this embedded contamination in the brake components is continually released starting another failure cycle. With our customer experiencing frequent, low hour follow-on failures, their only options were to replace the brake components when a pump failure occurred at a cost of $96,000 plus labour, or find a solution that could prevent the brake damage.

These results represent Mag-Shield^® performance over a period of 4 years, in a fleet of 35 trucks operating at an Alberta mine. Mag-Shield^® were installed in the hydraulic systems of this fleet due to expensive and repeat failures associated with collateral brake damage. Since installation, there have been no system wide failures compared to an historical average of 3 such failures per year and there have been no follow-on failures. The result: less disruption for operations, planning and maintenance; improved availability and millions of dollars saved. Return on investment was less than one year.