Shaft access system – excavate, convey and access a shaft from one mobile unit

Reopening or clearing a vertical shaft usually means mobilising a permanent headframe, a crane and several separate spreads. Our shafting system does it from one engineered, mobile unit. At its heart is the Articulated Headgear System (AHS), a self-erecting articulated mast, derived from our DNV-rated marine launch-and-recovery heritage, that walks itself upright on its own hydraulics, slews inboard over the shaft to hoist and outboard to discharge and carries the winches, sheaves and controls to excavate, convey and man-ride from a single accountable system.

What the system does

• Shaft excavation (muck-out) – an electro-hydraulic clamshell digging grab, with its own grab-mounted power pack fed through a constant-tension cable reeler, repeatedly digs and lifts backfill (including underwater) and discharges to a truck. A complete surface-based shaft-clearing method with no fixed headframe.
• Material and spoil conveyance – the headgear winch handles spoil, kibbles and equipment in and out of the shaft, with head sheaves sized to protect wire fatigue life.
• Man-riding – the system converts to compliant personnel access (see articulated headgear & conveyances ), with a dedicated man-riding winch and a redundant hoisting path.
• Permanent escapeway – a modular flat-pack ladder and rest-platform escapeway can be installed from the bottom up and anchored to the shaft lining, so the system leaves a permanent emergency egress behind it.
• Shaft doors and guarding – hydraulically actuated sliding collar doors cover and guard the opening, and pass passively upward if struck from below.

Engineered as one compliant system

We engineer the headgear, winches, grab, reeler, doors, HPU and controls together and design to the recognised shaft, lifting and machinery codes, the mine-shaft structures standards (headframes, conveyances, shaft structures and rope guides), lifting-equipment regulations, the machinery directive and CE marking, wire-rope safety standards and the applicable national mine-safety and man-riding regulations. The result is a single, certified, transportable system rather than a coordination job across several suppliers. Modules, base, mast, winch, HPU/cooling, break down to road-transportable loads and connect by quick-couplers, so one unit can move between shafts.

Indicative envelope is project-specific and confirmed at enquiry, the system has been engineered for backfilled shafts of the order of a hundred-plus metres deep and several metres in diameter, with man-riding and material-handling load cases sized to the duty.

On large-diameter drilling for shafts

Alongside grab-based excavation, MintMech’s wider large-diameter drilling capability is directly relevant to shaft sinking and raise work where a drilled shaft is the right method. (Scope and method confirmed per project.)