The Woodie

One bonus of working on a project in Whyalla was the accomodation. Instead of sharing a construction camp with a thousand other blokes, we were placed into local housing.

So after settling in to the routine here, I began a project of my own - a backyard woodie. It was based on the moon board. The angle of my woodie however is adjustable: it is fixed at the bottom with hinges, and connected with chains at the top. It was installed outside on a frame made from scaffold tubes.


We have had to move recently, and the woodie is now inside a "small" shed - check out the heinous change in angle!!!

Introducing Lia, our new dog

Just before Easter we picked up a 6 month old husky puppy from the RSPCA. They suggested we keep her on a "trial basis", as she was quite a handful.

It's now 2 months later, and Lia is still a handful. She has one blue eye and one brown eye, which we think reflects her "part angel, part satan" behaviour. There are however signs of improvement, and she has worked her way into our life.

Project Magnet HPGR's

This photo shows the Plant Feed bin (left of photo) and the High Pressure Grinding Rollers (the blue machines in the centre of the photo with 2 large orange motors connected to them). Ore is fed by conveyors to the Plant Feed bin, and then fed into the two HPGR's.

A HPGR is basically a set of smooth, spinning 38 tonne rollers. These rollers grind the ore down to between 20mm and 50mm, depending upon the gap set between the rollers. More HPGR information can be found here...

We are currently performing "no-load" tests on the HPGR's. This involves running the machines without ore, and testing functionality such as start-up and shutdown sequences and safety interlocks that protect the machine during normal operation.