EX3600 Crawler Shoes and Drive Tumblers

A customer located in the Pilbara region of Western Australia was operating seven Hitachi excavators, consisting of EX2500’s and EX3600’s. The OEM shoes on these machines were achieving between 13,500 and 19,700 hours, however the customer was seeking increased wear life in their tough application.

Bradken Crawler Shoes and Drive Tumblers were trialled alongside OEM undercarriages to quantify and validate any benefits that Bradken crawler shoes might provide to the customer in their hard rock application.

In these conditions, increased wear life can be achieved as a result of Bradken’s patented ‘Pillar of Strength’, which provides greater structural integrity to prevent crushing of the roller path as the crawler shoes wear, and through the use of Bradken’s proprietary through hardened alloy, which provides greater depth of wear material compared with case hardened crawler shoes.

With the Bradken Crawler Shoes and Drive Tumblers installed, the EX3600 machine achieved 25,876 hours. The previous OEM shoes on this same machine had achieved 13,624 hours in similar conditions. Other EX3600 excavators at the mine have also been replaced at notably lower hours than the Bradken undercarriage components.

The customer determined the cost per hour for the Bradken and OEM components. Bradken products achieved $15.27 cost per hour, compared to the OEM products at an average of $24.97 per hour. Resulting in a 39% cost saving to the customer.