Weir Minerals is celebrating 80 years of the Warman® slurry pump.
Invented by Charles Warman in Kalgoorlie, Western Australia in 1938, the Warman slurry pump used replaceable liners and a replaceable impeller, something that had never been done before.
“Charles Warman was a visionary and an innovator. The use of rubber lining in the pump was ground breaking as it reduced total ownership costs, was safer to handle and offered extended wear life in many abrasive slurry applications. It is a great example of solving customer problems with material science, and is still taught in universities today,” said Marcus Lane, global product manager for centrifugal pumps at Weir Minerals.
The Weir Group acquired the Warman pump in 1999.
“Warman is one of our leading brands. It has truly shaped the mining industry over the past 80 years and is a product we are all very proud of. The Warman pump, invented to solve high wear issues in slurry pumping, created a thriving industrial business that is now the cornerstone of Weir Minerals with over 8000 people, and over 150 manufacturing and service centres across the globe,” said Ricardo Garib, divisional president of Weir Minerals.
As part of the Weir Minerals division, there have been a number of technological advancements for the Warman pump range including a new impeller and inlet design for pumping mineral froths and high-density viscous slurries in 2002, and the Warman WBH pump with axial and rotationally adjustable throatbush to even out wear in 2009.
Weir Minerals has also developed its own IoT platform Synertrex™, which can be fitted to a Warman® pump to monitor its performance.
“The last 80 years of the Warman pump has given us a wealth of knowledge in how to operate a pump and efficiently transport slurry. Synertrex is going to be able to capture that wealth of knowledge and improve the product,” said Michael Hambe, data scientist for Weir Minerals. “The Synertrex platform allows us to collect and analyse data to predict the pump’s performance, and determine how efficiently it’s operating. This empowers our customers to run their pump at the optimal threshold of performance.”
In honour of the Warman brand, Weir Minerals hosted an event at the end of May in Kalgoorlie for key customers, past and present employees, and members of the Western Australian School of Mines.
Following the anniversary event, Weir Minerals has embarked on a six month celebration, sharing the history of Warman, commemorating the generation of experts behind the brand, highlighting key innovations behind the pump and telling the stories of the long-standing pumps on sites around the world.
