Making It Right Here In Ontario

” Made in Canada” is not something you read every day and when the words “Made in Ontario” are attached to anything nowadays, many more people do a double take because of the state of the province’s, and Canada’s manufacturing industry.

As almost everyone knows, offshore manufacturers dominate Canadian manufacturing in almost every category but every once in a while, a company like Nordic Mine Technology Inc. of North Bay comes along to challenge this trend by making a product to compete on an international basis.

In true Canadian fashion, however, the company is recognized more in other parts of the world than it is at home. In fact, its domestic sales account for less than 30% of its annual revenue.

From its modest headquarters on Highway 11 not too far south of Ontario’s popular Sudbury/Timmins mining area, Nordic has been designing, engineering and manufacturing a complete rail haulage system for mining applications since 1987.

Since then, the company has been making a materials handling system for mining applications and now has more than 250 -300 loading chutes and 18 -20 complete rail haulage systems worldwide.

When asked why the company has not been recognized more in Canada, Nordic’s Business Development Manager Philip Brown said it’s been a combination of a couple of things; the first being the number of mine operators in Canada not familiar with continuous high-speed loading/ unloading rail car system technologies and secondly, convincing those who are that a Canadian-made product is up to the task.

“Quite simply, we have to convince potential Canadian customers that a rail haulage system is an economical and reli-able way of moving materials within a mine operation,” said Brown. “In addition, we must ensure that the entire system, from the ore pass, through the chute, to the rail cars, rails and discharge materials and mechanisms, are efficient and of the highest quality”

To do this, says Brown, many of the components that make up the overall system are made from abrasive-resistant wear liners. The loading chute, for example, is fabricated using a sandwich design and wear liners to ensure the main structure has an extended life that enables the gravity unload system to handle sticky/wet muck or large boulders up to 1m x 1m x 2m in size.

Operating the loading chute can be handled from a remote pendant or a remote station underground or on the surface and the system has a backup fail-safe system to ensure full closure of all cylinders in the event of a power failure or emergency stop application.

The rail cars themselves are also made from abrasive-resistant wear plate, forged rail wheels, automatic couplers and a fully engineered suspension system. The above Nordic’s materials handling system is designed to include a 20-car train; during field testing the first car was configured with instrumented wheel sets to monitor forces to help prevent derailment due to speed and loads while the second car in the train was strain gauged to monitor the forces applied to the car body during loading and unloading.

Each car is equipped with a bottom door that follows a structural and wear-lined scroll beam using a hardened wheel installed on the centre of the rear axle. This enables the car to fully discharge before commencing any uphill travel and closing of the bottom door.

While in the unloading station, side roller wheels are used to support the train as it rides over the station’s discharge chutes and propulsion devices are used to propel the train through the station at a constant, controlled speed when only one locomotive is being used on the train.

The unloading station starts and stops automatically by using track sensors and tag readers. Due to the design of the gravity unload system, the car completely discharges regardless of whether the ore is sticky/wet or completely dry. An empty train is also capable of reversing through the unloading system to aid in mines with shuttle type track installations.

The above Nordic Mine Technology system has a 30 -35 year life expectancy before any major rebuild is required with an expected haulage capacity of 35 million tonnes per annum.