What are Wheel Loaders?

Wheel Loader (English name: Wheel Loader) is a kind of earthmoving machinery widely used in highways, railways, ports, docks, coal, mining, water conservancy, national defense engineering and urban construction and other places. It plays an important role in reducing labor intensity, accelerating the speed of project construction, and improving the quality of the project.

The main function of the wheel loader is to shovel and transport short materials. It is one of the fastest-growing construction machinery in terms of production, sales and market demand. We usually see the wheel loader the most, and the opposite is the track loader. Compared with the tracked type, it has the advantages of good maneuverability, no damage to the road surface, and easy operation. Therefore, the wheel loader is widely used.

In open-pit mines with suitable conditions, the use of wheeled loaders can highlight the following advantages:

1. The tire front loader has fast walking speed, short working cycle time and high loading efficiency. According to the introduction of mine calibration data, the front installed speed of bucket capacity of 5 ~ 8m ³ can reach more than 35km / h, which is 30 ~ 90 times faster than electric shovel. Each working cycle only takes 40 ~ 45s, and the average production capacity of the shift can reach 3500 ~ 4000t, average labor productivity can be increased by 50% ~ 100%.

2. The weight of the tire front loader is lighter, which is equivalent to 1/8 ~ 1/6 of the quality of the same bucket capacity excavator, which saves a lot of steel. The manufacturing cost is only 1/4 ~ 1/3 of the excavator. Excavators are cheap, which can reduce investment in production equipment and reduce the proportion of fixed assets.

3. The tire front loader has strong climbing ability and good maneuverability. It can perform loading operations on the slope working surface that is not allowed by the excavator, especially in new mine sites lacking electricity. Mine development and shorten construction period.

4. The depreciation period of the tire-type front-loading machine is only 1/4 ~ 1/8 of the excavator. It can be replaced with new and more advanced equipment after 5-6 years of work, which is convenient for mine management and maintenance and is conducive to the upgrading of equipment. .

5. The tire front loader is easier to operate than the excavator, which can shorten the driver training time. At the same time, one loader only needs one driver to operate, which can save manpower, material and financial resources.

However, compared with the excavator, the front loader also has some disadvantages in production:

(1) The tire-type front-loader has a lower digging capacity than an excavator. When the blasting quality is not good and there are many large pieces, its work efficiency will be significantly reduced; it is necessary to loosen the viscous materials before carrying out the shovel operation and other Auxiliary work.

(2) Compared with the excavator, the size of the working mechanism of the front loader is smaller; due to the limitation of safety conditions, it is not suitable to work on the working face with a high explosion.

(3) The tires of the front loader wear quickly and have a short service life. In recent years, although measures have been added to protect the chain link or use pad cushions to reduce tire wear, the tire life is only about 1500 hours, and tire costs still account for a large proportion of production equipment costs (about 40 % ~ 50%, even as high as 60%).

Many years of production practice at home and abroad have proven that wheel loaders are suitable for the following aspects:

1. It is used for loading, pushing and discharging, lifting and traction in the construction of open-pit mines and stripping, railway foundation construction and road construction.

2. It is used in small and medium-sized open-pit mines instead of excavators and cars as the main mining, loading, and transportation equipment of the mine; it can be operated in conjunction with automobiles and can also load ore rocks to crushing stations.

3. In some large open-pit mines, cooperate with the excavator to perform mining and loading operations and other auxiliary operations under complex conditions (such as selective mining, end of working face, scattered pile explosion, excavation of trenches, etc.).

4. It can be used for mining, loading and transporting joints with large slopes to complete difficult mining work.

There are two types of common front-loaders, tire-type and track-type, with their own characteristics. Although the crawler front loader has large traction and shovel, good performance in off-road and climbing, etc., it has low speed and inflexibility, and sometimes requires a trailer to transfer the operation site, and the construction cost is high. Therefore, track-type front loaders are rarely used in open-pit mines. Wheel loaders are the most commonly used in mines around the world. Therefore, their production volume is large and production technology is also developing rapidly. The largest bucket capacity has reached 40m ³ . ^[2]