Hitachi recently announced that two of its EX5500-5 front shovels passed significant service-life milestones while working at the Yanacocha gold mine in Peru—each has racked up more than 100,000 operating hours. The occasion was marked by an onsite recognition event, pictured above.
Both EX5500-5 machines—the predecessor to Hitachi’s current EX5600-6 model—were delivered 14 years ago and have been working at numerous pits in the 251-km2 surface mine ever since. Both machines achieved the 100,000-hour goal within three weeks of each other.
