The South American mining community leads the world in recognition and adoption of the latest grinding mill relining technologies. Clearly this region has recognised the benefits of improved relining performance as a defence against the Global Economic Crisis._x000D_
Five of the six RUSSELL TWIN 8 Mill Relining Systems, ordered to date, are either operating or being manufactured for South American mine sites. The sixth is for Sino Iron's Cape Preston Project in Western Australia._x000D_
This paradigm shift, towards very short relining times, aims at displacing mill relining activities from the critical path of concentrator maintenance shutdown schedules._x000D_
The first uses of the RUSSELL TWIN 8 Mill Relining System have seen some of the highest semi-autogenous grinding (SAG) mill new liner placement rates ever observed by Russell Mineral Equipment (RME), as would be expected with two, independent Machines working simultaneously in the one mill._x000D_
The liner replacement rate, averaged over the whole reline is good (27 per cent improvement over single Machine System in the same mill) but short of full potential. This modest result can be attributed to reline crews unfamiliarity with RUSSELL TWIN 8 System operation._x000D_
This paper compares a sample of conventional (single machine) RME Mill Relining System performance data with one double head' mill liner handler by others. Early performance of Escondida's new RUSSELL TWIN 8 System performance is then compared with recent single machine data from Escondida, immediately prior to RUSSELL TWIN 8 commissioning. RME and Escondida look to constantly improving RUSSELL TWIN 8 System performance as full operational familiarity is achieved._x000D_
The preparation of this paper revealed a need to develop a global industry standard for mill relining data collection. A web based platform to develop data collection templates is also discussed in Appendix 1.