The rebirth and rise of the small scale miner

[Mad Machinist]

My brother just got a "FREE" Bobcat delivered that has a hole in the block. Now all he needs is a donor engine for it! He also got +7 10KW generators as a lot. the company didn't want to spend the $$$$ on repairs and he got 1 heck of a deal for them all. He now has 6 of them up-n-running from the extra parts. So there is a way to get some needed equipment reasonable. BUT again MM mineing is rough on equipment and people just don't have the time and or the money to keep fixing this equipment. GOODLUCK on your adventure!

Nobody knows how rough on equipment better than I do. Repairing this stuff is all I do now. I have several ideas in use now in one of the biggest mine in this country. So far they are making the grade with flying colors.

 

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[Mad Machinist]

My brother just got a "FREE" Bobcat delivered that has a hole in the block. Now all he needs is a donor engine for it! He also got +7 10KW generators as a lot. the company didn't want to spend the $$$$ on repairs and he got 1 heck of a deal for them all. He now has 6 of them up-n-running from the extra parts. So there is a way to get some needed equipment reasonable. BUT again MM mineing is rough on equipment and people just don't have the time and or the money to keep fixing this equipment. GOODLUCK on your adventure!

Surplus Center.

 

[barrelroll]

Nobody knows how rough on equipment better than I do. Repairing this stuff is all I do now. I have several ideas in use now in one of the biggest mine in this country. So far they are making the grade with flying colors.

I hear ya, I think we work for the same company or you used to work for them. I'm underground and see how things get torn up on a daily basis. I think part of it is environment and part of it is employee attitude of run it into the ground and then drop it off at the shop the company will fix it.

 

[Mad Machinist]

I'll sell ya this thing I've got in the garage. It's got maybe 3500 liner feet drilled on it over the coarse of 12 days of 12 hour shifts. I tore it down and inspected it all for a report on the wear of the components and cleaned and resealed it. It's broke in good and runs even better then when it was new now. The leg didn't fair as well in the end of the test as they always get beat to hell by those who operate em, but don't have to spend the money on em, but hey! that's all the better for me in the sale of parts and pieces, which add up pretty quick on an average of $350 to $400 a month to keep just this thing in good operating condition and allot more if your miners are inexperienced and care not to lean anything form those who've been around. Seems I've seen an increase of those types in recent years and believe that's one of the reasons a mine will fail. The old miners who taught me how to run things were also left waist gunners on B17's in previous job titles. They'd say you be good to the mine and it'll be good to you "son" or should I call you cutie-pie with that pretty long hair there, cooch!... Can a small operation work? I'd say absolutely yes it can and I wish there were hundreds of them to call on, but this is the good ole USA and most believe we can't have that here.

I hear ya on equipment getting beat into the ground. I see it everyday. Clear water pumps don't last long when they are asked to pump railings.

I have my little brother involved in some of this. He's an industrial electrician and understands that side of things far better than I do, not that I'm a slouch in that department. Nice thing about electrical is if you push it too hard, the motor amps out tripping the breaker thus protecting the equipment from inexperienced miners.

Big generators are available cheap, with low hours, through mil surplus. Sometimes the big gas based compressors are available too. Ya know the ones where four cylinders of the engine are used as the compressor?

 

[kcm]

Hey MM, sent ya' a PM.

 

[tamrock]

I hear ya on equipment getting beat into the ground. I see it everyday. Clear water pumps don't last long when they are asked to pump railings.

I have my little brother involved in some of this. He's an industrial electrician and understands that side of things far better than I do, not that I'm a slouch in that department. Nice thing about electrical is if you push it too hard, the motor amps out tripping the breaker thus protecting the equipment from inexperienced miners.

Big generators are available cheap, with low hours, through mil surplus. Sometimes the big gas based compressors are available too. Ya know the ones where four cylinders of the engine are used as the compressor?

Indeed since Y2k there's been a surplus and big drop in demand for generators. I don't know whats it like today, but in 2008 you couldn't get much at all out of a generator big or small. I know the air compressor's your talking about, they converted one side of a small block Ford V8 to pump air. I just can't think of the brand name of those. In the 90's I sold Chicago Pneumatic equipment and I'd run in to folks who bought those engine/air portable compressor's. They put out a 100 psi at 175 cfm I think. It would be enough to run this Midwest GD 83S Jack Leg I have ready to go, especially if you had several hundred feet of 4'' air pipe full of 100 psi of air down at the face. I sell pneumatic diaphragm pumps too. You will want that to take care of all that flushing water coming out of your drill. If you don't want to use a water pump I sell LaCrosse Hip Waders so you won't get your socks soaking wet and boots full of water.

 

[Mad Machinist]

Indeed since Y2k there's been a surplus and big drop in demand for generators. I don't know whats it like today, but in 2008 you couldn't get much at all out of a generator big or small. I know the air compressor's your talking about, they converted one side of a small block Ford V8 to pump air. I just can't think of the brand name of those. In the 90's I sold Chicago Pneumatic equipment and I'd run in to folks who bought those engine/air portable compressor's. They put out a 100 psi at 175 cfm I think. It would be enough to run this Midwest GD 83S Jack Leg I have ready to go, especially if you had several hundred feet of 4'' air pipe full of 100 psi of air down at the face. I sell pneumatic diaphragm pumps too. You will want that to take care of all that flushing water coming out of your drill. If you don't want to use a water pump I sell LaCrosse Hip Waders so you won't get your socks soaking wet and boots full of water.

Yea, those are the compressors I'm talking about. I used to see the top ends for sale all the time dirt cheap but I'll be damned if I can find any now. All else fails I'll dig around for a rotary screw air end and couple it to a 4bt Cummins diesel.

The hip waders made me chuckle. I quit caring about being wet a long time ago. I have webbing between my toes anyhow. Just kidding, but I'm surprised I haven't grown it by now.

The pumps are the easy part though. Its the rest of the equipment that presents a financial problem for the micro to small scale guys.

 

[barrelroll]

Grimmer schmidt and someone else made those compressors. Before I got into mining the shop I worked at specialized in compressors. I worked on one a couple months ago and I can't for the life of me remember who made it. The guy bought it for a song not running out of a barn and then brought it to us. The bill was probably $2500 by the time it was up and running though if you did the labor your self you'd be in it less than $500. There's a ton of 185 CFM diesel rotary screw compressors out there. The majority we worked on were John Deere 4545 or equivalent 4 cylinder diesel powered. They were decent motors and the concrete guys had a hard time killing them.

With electric rotary screw compressors it was generally 4cfm per horse power. The 20-30hp electric stuff moved quickly, the 50 and 75hp + stuff sat around the shop for ever. Sullivan Palatek makes a rock solid air end with very few proprietary parts, we joked they were built out of a granger catalog. Some of the other manufacturers wanted you to buy everything from them.