Lumwana mine site visit
A team of SAIMC Zambia members from Kitwe joined up with Chingola members and drove through Solwezi into Lumwana, which is in the North Western province of Zambia. The plant visit started with a class room lecture and a presentation on Lumwana mine by Willboard Musonda, the instrumentation supervisor, who explained the plant layout and production cycle. The team then went onto the plant and saw the belt scale made by Process Automation of RSA and also the sag and ball mills. These are driven by Siemens motors where the shell is the rotor and the stator is the fixed outer part. There are only two mills with no standby, hence the machines are extra protected against under or over voltage. The plant is highly automated with Siemens PC 7 PLCs using a scada system linked through fibre-optic then via OLM and converted onto Profibus back to I/O.
The SAIMC (Z) executive thanked the personnel and management at the Lumwana mine for their support and the opportunity it gave to the younger technicians to get firsthand exposure to new automation technologies.
Solwezi sub-branch launch
Later that same evening the launch of the Solwenzi sub-branch took place. SAIMC (Z) acknowledged the endorsement and recognition by LMC for the Society for Automation, Instrumentation, Measurement and Control (SAIMC) and for allowing its members to keep abreast and up-to-date with technology advancements in industry that promote productivity. The Zambian branch vice chairman, Widdy Chimba, LMC senior electrical and instrumentation engineer, encouraged fellow mine colleagues in instrumentation to register as members, saying the benefits were many, such as knowledge development in the theory and practice of measurement and control. The SAIMC Zambia is a branch of the main body of the SAIMC and people were encouraged to visit the website for more information.
The guest of honour, LMC chief electrical engineer Mulenga Mwendapole, highlighted concerns by the government that engineers must be identified as professionals and the benefits that SAIMC membership provides in this regard. SAIMC Zambia has its Secretariat in Kitwe and is registered with the Registrar of Societies and recognised by EIZ. EIZ issues and monitors all engineering licences to practice in Zambia as per statutory requirements, so becoming a member is important. The guest of honour cautioned that sometime soon this year people in all engineering fields will be scrutinised by EIZ to ascertain their engineering competency.
Finally, SAIMC (Z) members and all those practicing control and instrumentation were encouraged to continue taking the society to higher levels by driving the local industry effectively thereby maximising productivity and reducing costs.
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