Iron ore (sinter feed) is produced in Minas Gerais state, Brazil and exported through the Tubarão port in Espírito Santo state. The sinter feed is transported by train to the port and from there embarked by ship to the final customers. After unloading the train wagons, the ore is piled up and loaded by a bucket wheel reclaimer onto the ship.

The capacity of the bucket wheel reclaimer is 6.500 tons per hour and the sinter feed is 6 meter/second. The bucket wheels which were lined with technical plastics are subject to high impact and abrasive wear.

The customer of a big mining company has been working with Kalenborn on wear protection for other industrial components for years and asked for a more economical solution.

Therefore Kalenborn made the bucket wheel areas which needed to be protected from hard welded overlay steel plates KALMETALL W100 with 8 and 5 mm thickness and constructed the corners with the hard cast material KALCAST. Both materials offer a very persuasive choice with excellent impact strength and wear resistance.

Due to the direct design with our KALMETALL W100 hard welded overlay steel plates, the original steel construction with subsequent lining with KALMETALL was no longer necessary. In addition, the expense for the reinforced welding of the bucket wheel corners in the blades was eliminated by the constructive form with the hard cast material KALCAST.

With this wear protection design, we achieve a longer service life and trouble-free operation for the bucket wheel reclaimer.