Thursday, May 23, 2013

Winder Motor Failure







Some more old pictures from the Ertsberg mine in Freeport, Indonesia. At this mine, Ore was crushed at the mine site and delivered to the concentrator via cable skips. One of the winding motors over-sped and disintegrated. No one was injured.

The second photo is the rotor segment, where it came to rest in the electrician’s yard. The lunch box, placed in shot for size reference, is about 300 mm long and 250mm high.

The rotor segment flew through the winder house wall (photo 5)..then across to the Electrician’s compound. It hit the bank just below the donga and went up through the floor / wall, out the roof and landed in the yard behind.

Photo 6 was taken looking along the “flight path”. Note the flat trajectory. The segment went under the stair stringer (upper right) – missed the cable car gondola and all the cables It hit the bank just below the donga and went up through the floor / wall, out the roof and landed in the yard behind.

Photo 7, close-up of the impact site and donga damage. Inside was an electrical foreman’s office. The, Aussie expat, foreman had just left his desk which was up against the wall just right of the window. What’s left of the desk is visible through the window.

2 comments:

andrewjlowry said...

Thank you for sharing.

That is a great story and set of pictures.

When was this approximately?

I had to look up Donga as we don't use that term in Canada. :)

Anonymous said...

July - August 1980. Can't remember exactly.

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