¡VAMOS! Reaches Design Freeze Stage

After 18 months the ¡VAMOS! Consortium has reached the “design freeze” stage of the prototypes to be built, Damen Shipyards Group informed.

¡VAMOS!, the Viable Alternative Mining Operating System, is a 42-month research and development project launched to enable the opening and rehabilitation of underexploited European mineral deposits. The project is funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme.

Over the past months the system architecture of the equipment for ¡VAMOS! was further developed into designs for the equipment prototypes. The designs, including the working method of the system, were evaluated by external experts who sit on the project advisory board, the company explained.

“We’ve had only minor changes in our designs thus far, and to ensure proper interfacing later we’re using an Integration Register during further design,” said the project’s technical manager, Stef Kapusniak from Soil Machine Dynamics.

The technical partners of the consortium will now be starting procurement and construction. The build phase should be completed by the end of this year, after which, each component will undergo functional testing before being assembled. Due to lead times of certain parts, some components are being built already. The cutter boom and chassis of the mining vehicle is being constructed at Sandvik, Austria. The high-pressure slurry pump is ready for performance testing at Damen Dredging Equipment, Nijkerk, the Netherlands.

A “zero-state” environmental and geo-hazard identification criteria template has been prepared, and the ethics requirements as imposed by the EU have been checked.

“Progress is on schedule, and we are looking forward to reporting shortly on the state of play to the H2020 commission,” said Jenny Rainbird from BMT Group Ltd, who coordinate the project.