"Mining Special" Winch Combines Brute Force, Finesse

We don't expect a muscular football player to be adept at sewing. And we certainly don't picture a painter turning to weightlifting for relaxation. In the rare cases where the two extremes of power and precision come together, it is a noteworthy event.

Such is the case with Allied's new W8L "Mining Special" winch. It delivers even higher line pull than the standard W8L winch, and it has the fine line control of a hydraulic winch.

The Mining Special came about through the special requirements of PCS Phosphate in Lake City, Florida. In the phosphate mine, raw ore is moved as a slurry through 20-inch diameter steel pipe at the rate of 4,600 cubic yards per hour. Huge mud pumps drive the slurry through the pipes to the processing area and back to the tailings pile.

The towing winches on their Cat dozers serve two quite different purposes. The first job is to tow the mud pumps from one location to another as the pipe configuration changes. These pumps are heavy and tend to be mired in the wet ground. Tremendous pulling power is needed to pull the pumps free of the mud.

The second job is to lower one length of pipe into position so that it can be bolted to the next length of pipe. The winch is fitted with a boom to allow this function. In this case, the operator must be able to control the position of the winch cable precisely so that the two pipe flanges can be aligned for bolting together.

With these requirements in mind, winch engineer Todd Giesbrecht took the standard W8L winch and added additional internal gearing to lower the overall gear ratios. As the table shows, the gear ratio in the forward direction was reduced somewhat, but the reverse, or line out, gear ratio was decreased to one-fifth of the original value.

The benefit of the reduced line out speed is control over line position. The operator can lower the pipe to the exact location for aligning with the adjacent section of pipe for bolting.

This development is another demonstration of Allied's ability to respond quickly to the customer's special requirements. Special credit goes to Ring Power, the Caterpillar dealer in Lake City, and their branch manager, Mark Hill. Mark was instrumental in communicating the customer requirements to Allied and in pushing the project to a successful conclusion. Don Thomas, Allied's Territory Manager, maintained the high level of communication between the factory and the field to ensure a successful delivery.