EQUIPMENT maker Sandvik has spent a lot of time ensuring customers have everything they need to keep their machines moving.  This has meant investing in workshop facilities in mining centres, as well as on mines.  It has also meant the development of a maintenance "school" at the company's Canning Vale facility.

However, the Swedish underground mining equipment maker was not happy with just training the maintenance staff. After all, bad operator practice can be a major cause of equipment damage. To this end it started working with South African simulator maker ThoroughTec. The fruit of that collaboration has been in operation at Sandvik's Western Australian base for the past couple of months.

This has enabled Sandvik VA sales manager Jim Walsh and his offsider Andy Winspear to put customers' operators through their paces on an Axera 7 jumbo, a Toro 40D truck and a Toro 007 loader. The simulator is extremely realistic, complete with a motion base. Each module mimics exactly the controls of the machine it is simulating. The system allows the trainer to throw in various problems for the operator to deal with. While largely being used as a skills enhancement tool, the simulator has great potential for use as a training device for novices.  That capability was put to the test by a group of executives from Aspermont, the publisher of Australia's Mining Monthly. Their lack of experience showed but each managed to master the controls of operating of an Axera 7 (after a fashion) in a relatively short period of time.