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IS MORE UPTIME September 2018 www.coalage.com 35 drive systems continued The typical fan blade sizes are 68 in. to 96 in. Horton's HTEC thermoset compos- ite fans, which can be custom-designed and are described by the company as more efficient and quieter than metal equiva- lents, "couple really well with these fan drives," Virmani said. The drive offers up to 22,000 in.-lbs torque. A qualifying engine is in the 1,700- hp to 4,000-hp range. For installation, Horton provides both the parts and service. "We can work on any equipment brand," Virmani said. "If it is a first-time installation, we send out our application engineers on-site to get the retrofit done so the dealers can see how it is done, they can learn, they can ask ques- tions, and if they need help they know who to talk to to find the answers." After installation, the maintenance schedule synchs with that of the engine. "It is optimized for the mines so they are not taking a truck down just to do some maintenance on this," said Kevin Albers, associate marketing manager, Horton. And maintenance is limited to re-greasing bearings. "We have a special Zerk-fitting for it, and the interval that we recommend is 2,500 hours," Virmani said. "Quite possibly in the near future, we might increase it to 5,000 hours." Since the release, it has been tested on or deployed to "a wide range of appli- cations," Albers said. "We've had them on generator sets, wheel loaders and mine haul trucks." The feedback so far has taken two forms. The first is data from the mine sites, who report the solution has met or bested expectations. For example, a diamond miner in arc- tic Canada needed the drive to remedy "over-cooling issues that resulted in en- gine reliability and durability" concerns on wheel loaders, Virmani said. "We in- stalled our fan drives in there and they shared data that showed that fuel dilution problems completely went away." Two hemispheres away, a Western Australian miner adopted the drive to improve fuel efficiency on a hauler. Later, Horton offered to replace it with the latest model, only to be rejected. "They said, 'no, it is working just great, and we don't want to change it,'" Virmani said. The second form of feedback is in- creased demand. For now, that means the company is busy with retrofits. For tomor- row, it means the drives could come stan- dard on entire lines of mining equipment. "There are two top-five mining equipment OEMs" currently collaborating with Hor- ton toward that end, Virmani said. Details are proprietary, he said, but "one of them is very close; one of them is a year or so out." Marrying the solution off to a major OEM could be fitting inflection point in the bigger Horton story, Virmani said. It would speak to one of the company's core philos- ophies. "Considering the environmental consciousness that has grown in the world," people could one day see the drive and its proliferation "as a step change in the sector because it could reduce fuel consumption on mine sites quite a bit," Virmani said. And by that, "we feel we're making a contribu- tion to the sustainability of the planet." LESS DOWNTIME with CleanScrape ® Belt Cleaner LESS IS MORE WITH CLEANSCRAPE ® BELT CLEANER. Less Blade Replacements / More Blade Life – lasts up to 4x as long as traditional cleaners Less Maintenance / More Performance – only one tensioner adjustment ever Less Concern / More Confi dence – safe for vulcanized and mechanical splices visit martin-eng.com 800.544.2947 / 309.852.2384 cleanscrape@martin-eng.com ® Registered trademark of Martin Engineering Company in the US and other select locations. © 2018 Martin Engineering Company. Additional information can be obtained at www.martin-eng.com/trademarks and www.martin-eng.com/patents. A GLOBAL FAMILY LESS DOWNTIME IS MORE UPTIME with CleanScrape ® Belt Cleaner