Mill Installation – Foskor Phalaborwa

This project involved the installation of 2 x 12ft brand new ball mills - supplied by Citic. The site was Foskor Phalaborwa and the client was DRA.

We sent up a 15-man crew consisting of a site manager, a safety officer, riggers, mill fitters and a piping crew.

The end of Oct 2018, we began with our site establishment and laid out containers & green areas as we were going to be there for a 4-5 month period. We began by offloading all new equipment and mill components – delivered by Citic.

Work commenced on both mill foundations by firstly checking the levels and heights of the civil foundations and once confirmed, the installation of the mill base plates could commence.? Once the baseplates were in place, aligned and levelled the bearing housings could then be rigged up and positioned on the base plates.

The mill shells would be the next to be installed. These are temporarily held by jacking cradles to enable the mill heads to be installed and fastened to the shell.? The mill shell weighed approx 30 tons and each mill head weighed approx 20 tons, of which there were 2.? Both mill shells were installed onto the respective foundations using a 220T crane

Once all shell-to-mill head fasteners were in place then the mills were lowered into the bearing housings. At this point all high and low-pressure lubrication piping could be installed and site-run from the mill to the lubrication units located on the ground level. All lubrication piping was pickle and passivated on site before final joining took place.? We then went on to install the girth gear segment, because of the weight and reach a 220-ton hydraulic crane was used.?

Unfortunately, this is where the project came to a sudden halt.

Due to investment pullout, the project was put on hold until further notice in March 2019.??

With sponsoring parties back on track and the client's ambition to continue where they left off, the project was restarted in August 2021.

Due to the site being left unattended for 2 and a half years, the scope of work increased as all components had to be opened and stripped to check for surface damage. Any components not within spec had to be refurbished on site or taken to suitable workshop facilities.??

At this stage, gearbox, motors and pinions were then installed on both mills and drive train laser alignment equipment was used to align the drives on both mills.? The feed chute, discharge trommel screen and the internal rubber liners on both mills were installed. Last on the list was to install all guards. All mill shell bolts and hold-down foundation bolts could be re-torqued up using a hytorc machine.

We then confirmed the alignment of the mill and refilled the lubrication units as per OEM (Citic) specifications.? We remained on site for a further 2 weeks for both mills to be commissioned and to make sure the client was happy and that both mills were running as expected.