Digital radio takes the grind out of industrial comms

Faced with an ageing analog radio system that was becoming difficult to maintain and which did not provide coverage in important areas of its plant, Australian company Moly-Cop turned to Hytera DMR digital technology to provide a solution.

An installation of three base stations, a combination of handheld and mobile radio units and the SmartDispatch console now provides better, clearer, more reliable communications, enhancing efficiency and safety.

Moly-Cop is a division of Arrium, an international mining and materials company with around 10,000 employees and annual sales of almost $7 billion. Moly-Cop produces grinding media and wire ropes for the mining industry and railway wheels and axles for the transport industry. The company’s grinding media mill is located in Newcastle, New South Wales. It is the largest supplier of grinding media in the world, with a nominal capacity of 250,000 tonnes per annum.

“Moly-Cop’s Newcastle site had a 20-year-old analog radio system that needed replacement,” says Bob Selby-Wood of Radio Industries, the dealership that installed the system. “To give you an idea of what they were up against, they have a foundry plant called the ‘ballroom’ where they make metal balls the size of cannon balls for the grinding media business. They’d never had radio coverage in the ballroom, due to the microwave furnaces. So we went in and tested Hytera DMR units to demonstrate the difference between digital and the old analog units, and it just belted them out of the park.”

Radio Industries recommended a mixture of around 100 Hytera DMR portable and mobile radios (the latter for use in forklifts and trucks around the plant), three base stations and the Hytera SmartDispatch console.

The three base stations.

Comprehensive planning was important. “First we went through the testing process, where we installed a test base station and radios and headsets,” says Selby-Wood. “We did that twice, to show all the key stakeholders that the system would work as planned.

“We settled on a system whereby the base stations are effectively joined together. It’s really a pseudo trunk system. We divided the base stations up amongst the number of people and groups needed.”

The basic portable used is the PD702. For supervisors there is a higher-level portable with a screen, the PD782, from which they can also make and receive phone calls. The MD782 is the mobile radio; it’s also used at the SmartDispatch console. All the units have GPS built in. The three base stations are MD982s, which have telephone interconnects installed.

Programming the radios on-site.

“Physically, it took around five days to install the system. The radios were all programmed on-site. We sat around in a big room - Hytera, us and the client - and did all of the programing together,” said Selby-Wood. “We had complete compliance with the customer, 100% from top to bottom, and they had total compliance with us. It was probably the easiest large installation I’d had for years.”

“At Hytera, we put a lot of effort into ensuring the best radio designs and functionality possible, and this has been well proven by the market,” said Terry Feng, Hytera’s sales director. “We’re honoured to be involved with solving real-life problems for our customers.”

This was all just on two years ago now, and the dealer has not had one radio back in for repair, despite the hostile industrial environment. “We did have two radios come back in for servicing because the sound had become a bit muffled, but after we blew the iron filings out of the speaker they worked fine again,” said Selby-Wood with a laugh