Mining Hoist Rope Cable Visual Inspection Challenge

The Challenge

In Ontario, the required visual inspection for hoist ropes necessitates taking the hoist offline and manually inspecting the rope. This process is slow and conducted visually by a technician. The average visual inspection can take anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour. During which, the hoist remains offline, causing downtime and operational delays.

Context and Background

Manual visual inspections of hoist ropes are time-consuming and can miss nuanced defects, leading to potential safety issues, reactive maintenance, and extended downtime. Given the crucial role of hoist ropes in mining operations, ensuring their integrity is vital. Glencore INO is looking for real-time visual rope inspection technology to replace manual inspections.

Inspection Challenges and Considerations

According to the attached Visual Mining Rope Inspection Overview, the following are factors that inspectors look for to determine whether the rope should be condemned or require further investigation:

• Rope Distortion: Issues like kinking, crushing, un-stranding, bird-caging, strand displacement, core protrusion, high stranding, and looped wires.
• Broken Wires and Strands: Including their distribution and the period they occur.
• Diameter Reduction: Due to abrasion, corrosion, core failure, or inner wire breakage.
• Uniform rope lubrication: A bare spot on the rope may lead to corrosion and premature failure.
• Corrosion: Especially near end terminations, which may not be immediately visible.

Solution Requirements

The proposed solution should:

• Enable real-time visual inspection during normal hoist operation. (Note: The hoist speed can be up to 18.5 m/s.)
• Detect and report on rope distortions, broken wires, corrosion, rope lubrication, and diameter reductions.
• Provide accurate data to detect non-conformances and predict and prevent potential failures.
• Be scalable to inspect all typical hoist rope diameters (generally between 35 to 45 mm) at Glencore INO.