While designing products for hazardous areas underground, our engineers conduct a great deal of testing on site. But nothing beats a real live field test. The Nautitech® team recently conducted a collaborative test with Komatsu in Rutherford, NSW to evaluate the Spitfire® BPLM for communication between a shuttle car and DCB.

We would like to thank Harshal Patwardhan – Manager Control and Automation and Samantha Ince, Automation Engineer from Komatsu Mining, for facilitating our on-site field test.

The purpose of the test was to measure the transmission speed and quality of data between a shuttle car and Gate End Box (to simulate DCB). The test considered both the length of the trailing cable and the influence that slip rings can have on the performance of data transmission while the cable was wound/unwound.

Using the Spitfire® Broadband Powerline Modem, Nautitech® was able to demonstrate the transmission of Ethernet data through the shuttle car trailing cable and slip rings in excess of 44 Mbit/sec.  This exceeds the requirements for the transmission of video and operating parameters to the DCB.

Access the full report from our website HERE

For more information about the Spitfire® range of underground communications and data solutions, contact us on