In North Dakota, L&H recently serviced two 2570 draglines; the team performed world class work in record time. A swing rack change out was completed in only 21 days without undecking the machine. Working around the clock to replace each of the 12 gear segments, they were then aligned to the center pin using innovative procedures. The modern technology and advanced methods used by the field service team maintained high quality specifications and extreme tolerances on the job; while additionally completing outage in well under the timeframe with zero injuries or incidents.
A second outage, consisting of a propel repair on a 2570 involved the removal of a propel cam and shaft to replace the main propel bull gear and 3rd intermediate pinions. The customer’s machine suffered a catastrophic failure of the propel bull gear; so L&H crews were called in to repair the machine and get it working again. Once the machine was disassembled, the damaged components were removed and repair work began. Working around the clock; the L&H field team was able to get the machine back up and running 4 days sooner than the customer’s projected time line. Once again a job done safely and efficiently without injuries or incidents.
Big machines and big repairs
When it comes to servicing big machines, there is no job too big for L&H’s field service team, according to Marley Ziegler, L&H’s Field service Manager,
“L&H’s field service team is a group that has been together for a long time and understand how important it is for the customer to get what we promised them before the project stated. The team takes a lot of pride in what they do, and how safe they do it and when the job gets done. To each one of them it is a serious sense of accomplishment to finish a job on time without safety or technical issues.”
To handle some of these large machine outages and repairs in the field, L&H has invested in new technology to create safer and more efficient operations for their field teams. Gary Collins, A key supervisor on the project stated,
“During these jobs in North Dakota a big part of our success was due to the use of custom and specialized tooling to make the work more efficient as well as pre-job inspections and preparations. Without this tooling and preparation these jobs could have extended beyond the customers allowed time line.”