Sector slump drives surface-engineering demand

The mining industry downturn continues to spark calls for higher productivity on mine sites, says Sydney-headquartered advanced surface-engineering technique developer LaserBond, which has helped fuel demand for its products.

“We’ve said our day will come at the bottom of the cycle,” LaserBond chairperson Allan Morton points out, adding that the company’s laser-applied coatings extend the life of a product by three times that of its factory prescribed life span.

During the boom in the mining industry, mine managers were not willing to pay for life-span-extending equipment services, as most did not consider the knock-on effects that equipment downtime had on production. “[However,] now companies are looking at costs and the cost of downtime overwhelms any incremental cost of a higher- performing component.”

Morton adds that the economic benefit is not so much that the components are lasting longer, “it’s that you don’t have to shut the system down to changecomponents so they’re getting longer cycles out”, which also has ramifications in the workplace with regard to health and safety.

LaserBond has recently formed a research collaboration with the University of South Australia’s (UniSA’s) Future Industries Institute and is in the process of establishing a new “laser cell”, featuring a 16 kW laser, which it hopes will be commissioned next month.

The new laser is expected to allow the company to double its production.“We are able to deposit material quicker than we currently do. We want to be able to increase that speed to enable us to be more cost effective for our customers,” Morton explains.

He states that these types of lasers offer a 60% energy saving, higher efficiency and less waste, adding that the company currently has the three most powerful lasers in Australia in this industry and the one being acquired by LaserBond will be twice as big. “It will be the highest power laser beam used for laser cladding in the southern hemisphere,” he boasts.

The company, founded in New South Wales, has about 65 staff and has had a plant in South Australia since 2013. LaserBond predominantly manufactures for the mining industry and the company exports about 80% of its products to countries, such as Chile, Mongolia and South Africa.

The company manufactures a range of mining equipment including mining picks, furnace doors and ‘down the hole’ hammers. These products are typically made from steel and then applied with materials, such as nickel alloys, tungsten, titanium carbides and ceramics. Morton explains that for any metal component that wears, LaserBond is able to apply a surface to make it last longer.

“This is, effectively, three-dimensional printing using industrial robots and industrial lasers to add material to existing substrates to create better performing products.”

LaserBond founder and executive director Greg Hooper has moved from Sydney to Adelaide to play a key role in the research and development (R&D) side of the business and in the collaboration with UniSA’s Mawson Lakes campus, just a five-minute drive from the company’s South Australia base at Cavan.

“We envisage that South Australia has the focus for R&D and will become our product manufacturing division, which will be our biggest division over time.

“It appears to me that the time is changing with regard to the collaboration of universities with private industry and it’s very enlightening.” Hooper concludes.