A new, mobile, all-terrain maintenance pod from BOA Hydraulics is helping quarries maintain vital hydraulic hoses.
For more than three generations, BOA Hydraulics has been one of the nation’s leading hydraulic repair services.
Neville Boakes formed the company in 1963, originally as an auto-electrical business. Following several evolutions in the sector and a handful of name changes, the business is now a hydraulic hose fitting and repair service.
What is a hydraulic hose?
A hydraulic hose is a specialist type of hose, typically constructed from flexible rubber or wire and feature a series of layers to give the hose its strength and durability.
Hydraulic hoses have three layers: an inner tube, a reinforced layer and an outer layer; and the hose has the purpose of allowing fluid (typically hydraulic fluid) to flow from one component to another.
The hose layer ensures that fluid can travel unimpeded and is essential for hydraulics systems to keep moving.
If it fails or becomes faulty, it could bring entire production lines to a standstill and take vital machinery offline until the hose can be replaced. This is where BOA Hydraulics comes in.
BOA Hydraulics marketing executive Jorge Boakes and director Greg Boakes spoke to Quarry about the importance for operators and other staff to have the ability to repair and replace hoses themselves, as opposed to external contractors.
“There’s a big push for [BOA Hydraulics] at this point in time, especially with the quarry industry, where servicing is done and the essential parts of machines are regularly looked over,” Jorge Boakes said.
“Hoses are not traditionally checked. We’ve seen this time and time again lead to scenarios where the hoses could have been replaced as part of the regular service, but they weren’t.
“As such, more money and time is spent as the machine is then due to be serviced for a second time.”
Greg Boakes said planned scheduled service work contracts for machinery is essential for sites to function efficiently.
“There’s a real problem when [hydraulic hoses] breakdown, as there’s time and resources that need to be allocated to repair the vehicle, and often these sites are quite large,” he said.
The company has introduced the BOApod, which enables companies and operators to assemble hydraulic hoses safely and efficiently on-site, as well as replace them when necessary.
The mobile hose repair and maintenance facility is suited for all weather and terrain and includes European precision crimping and cutting machinery.
The primary purpose of the BOApod is to reduce downtime waiting on hydraulic hose repairs and to replace hydraulic hoses in machinery before the hoses stop working, thus preventing unnecessary costs and time wasted.
Greg Boakes added that the BOApod will eliminate breakdowns on the field.
“What we’ve found from studies and our own research is that 37 per cent of unplanned breakdowns on machines, which causes them to stop, is due to a blown hose,” he said. “That’s a big number and a big issue and a big cost.
“What happens in a quarry situation is you’ve got a whole supply chain. If something stops working due to a blown hose, there’s not just the cost of the downtime on a machine, but also on people standing around who can’t work since, down the line, production has stalled.
“Other parts of the process often have to stop, which can start costing some big dollars.”
Jorge Boakes said the BOApod gives users the ability perform preventative maintenance then and there when something has broken down.
“It gives peace of mind, knowing that when it goes out in the field and goes back into digging it’s got new hoses and they last longer and until the next planned shutdown,” he said.
The company provides a training program on how to get the most out of the BOApod and its features, for example ensuring the hose reel is kept neat and above the ground if it is electrical.
BOA Hydraulics has all the hose parts labelled so they can easily be scanned from the BOA hub app to reorder replacements.
“We hear from a lot of people that, before, hydraulic hoses was a headache. Now, with this, it’s just so easy,” Jorge Boakes said.
“That’s where we sit apart from our competitors and the wider industry, as we’re providing to the quarry operators a solution they can manage themselves and work to reduce costs on-site, as opposed to other businesses that are just selling repairs and hoses once the machines are already broken down.”
The BOApod is user-friendly, delivered to site, fully stocked and a turn-key solution available in Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and the Pacific Islands. •
To learn more, visit boahydraulics.com/home-aus