Huge new barrel manufacture a custom build

North of Dunedin in the Otago region, Macraes is New Zealand’s largest gold producing operation. To date, the two mines have producing over 4 million ounces of gold.

Jonel’s Christchurch team recently organised the manufacture of a huge new barrel for a large Hitachi EX25000-6 digger at the mine.

With the worn barrel shipped directly to the larger Auckland hydraulic workshop, the service team sprang into action.

The actual size of the barrel impressive with inner dimensions of 310mm, and at almost 4m long the barrel weighed 4.2 tonnes. As the barrel material wasn’t available locally, the Jonel team had to custom manufacture the new barrel by reboring and the honing to size. This saved time rather than waiting on freighting in a replacement.

First steps involved cutting off the base eye and gland, before manufacturing and honing a completely new barrel. The gland and base eye were then reattached using heat shrinking and welding to complete a full retube project. The total project took  120 man hours.

This video shows the cylinder tube being pre-machined ready for being welded onto the new barrel.