James Cone Jr., terminal manager, and Mike Gawinski, Rulmeca Corporation president, inspected the machines in 2017 after two full seasons of reclaiming taconite at 4,000 tph.

By August 2015, the reclaiming rate of each 40-year-old bucket wheel reclaimer had decreased to 1,500 tph. The drop in reclaim rate directly increased ship loading times. Also, unscheduled stoppages of the reclaimers’ conveyors caused significant delays in vessel turnaround time.

Engineers from Rulmeca Corporation and Jasper Engineering worked with Two Harbors operations personnel and Rick Embry of Embry Automation & Control to identify the problems with the existing drives, verify conveyor belt power requirements, and make a load-sharing plan for the discharge conveyor dual drive system.