Mining & Construction

Mining and construction sites weigh material rather than packed goods: quarried rock, sand and gravel, concrete, spoil, and the trucks and loaders that carry them. Loads are heavy and arrive as a shock instead of being placed, which is the first thing a weighing system has to survive. The weight itself may be read on a truck scale at the gate, on the loader, or on a belt feeding a plant.

Capacity comes from the heaviest vehicle and the highest axle group load, not from an average load, and the platform or deck has to take the concentrated load under a wheel or a bucket. Where trucks and loaders move on and off all day, impact and entry speed dominate the design, and a scale that sits level with the yard surface usually lasts better than one with a lip to drive over. Bulk material also spills, and spilled aggregate under a platform or in a pit turns into a maintenance problem.

Site conditions decide the rest: dust, mud, standing water, driven rain and in some cases wide temperature swings, plus the cable runs between the scale and the place where the weight is read. Protection for the load cells, the junction box and the indicator, and a route that keeps cables clear of the traffic, are best settled together with the foundation. What the site cannot do without – whether an area is treated as hazardous, or a specific verification is required locally – has to come from the customer’s own engineering and safety side.

How the weight is used ends the list. A gate ticket for every truck, a total per day or per customer, a reading in the loader cab, or data handed to a plant or quarry system are different arrangements, and the traffic flow – entry and exit directions, the queue and the turning space – decides the layout as much as the scale does.