See diagram here.

The Surface Miner is a mobile milling machine with a mechanically driven cutting drum that rotates in an up-cutting direction, with an optional conveyor system. The cut material can be directly loaded into trucks or stacked into large windrows – when the conveyor is removed, the cut material is windrowed between the rear tracks.

GCM’s fleet consists of Wirtgen Surface Miners. The drums on these machines are located between four steerable and height-adjustable crawler units, an automatic levelling system ensures that the machine maintains the exact cutting depth. This allows even, thin seams or layers to be selectively mined with maximum precision, with a cutting accuracy of 50mm+/-. The advantage of this selective mining method is that vibration-free material can be extracted without drilling and blasting, with very little dust and noise generated. At the same time, the low environmental impact makes it possible to fully exploit the deposits, even in the immediate vicinity of infrastructure and culturally sensitive areas.

The Wirtgen Surface Miners have the drum positioned in the centre of the machine. This has the advantages of increased breakout power, with the full weight of the machine sitting over the drum, and increased stability when trimming to a final level.

GCM’s Surface Miners cut, crush and load the material in one single pass. This process eliminates the need for drilling, blasting, loading and primary crushing. This means that one machine completes the job of many different pieces of equipment. The mining process thus becomes straightforward and economically efficient.

See chart here.

The Wirtgen 2500SM Surface Miner is a 100t machine. See dimensions here. The Wirtgen 4200SM Surface Miner, is a 200t machine. See dimensions here. Our surface miners can be uniquely disassembled for a more compact transportation.

On average it takes 1 minute to change a pick. We use a hydraulic gun to pop out the pick and a copper hammer to knock the pick in.

The average pick weighs about 2.5kg

We use tungsten tipped picks and we have a number options and suppliers of picks we match the picks with the material we are cutting.

• Low vibration makes the surface miner an ideal tool to use near infrastructure such as housing, pipelines and roads
• Material produced by Surface Miner (95% passing 75mm sieve) easy to push up, load, transport, place, spread and compact.
• Stability of the surface miner over rough terrain, e.g., the surface miner can typically operate in similar terrain to a large tracked dozer;
• The walls and floors of the excavation, batters and boxing out of roads for sub-base are precisely cut, using GPS
• No subsurface damage due to over blasting
• Reduced Environmental impact
• No Production time lost due to stoppages for Blasting
• Less Equipment and People required – crew consists of 1 x Operator and 1 x Fitter
  Walls are free from blast-affected material
• No batter trimming required
• Reduced wear and tear on trucks and drivers by loading pre-crushed material

See diagram here.

Wirtgen 4200 Surface Miner is ~ AUD$9 million
Wirtgen 2500 Surface Miner is ~ AUD$4.2 million

GCM have developed a specialised surface mining operator training program which ensures our personnel are well educated in safe working and productive operational methods.

GCM have developed this program in-line with national standards and regularly review and update the training to ensure the latest changes and improvements are incorporated. All GCM Operators undergo this thorough training, along with a significant number of our maintenance personnel.