HOF Citations 2016 Underground Production - Hermann Paus
2016
UNDERGROUND PRODUCTION
IN ASSOCIATION WITH
Hermann Paus
Hermann Paus was an innovator in
underground mining equipment and
was a great ambassador between the
mining industries of the West and the
former Soviet Union.
He was born in 1932 and had studied
agricultural engineering. He founded
the company Hermann Paus
Maschinenfabrik in 1968. Since 1974, the
company has been designing and producing
machines for mining.
The earlier Paus products acquired an excellent
reputation, especially in the former Soviet Union.
This was particularly the case for the transport
vehicles ‘Berga-Tank’, ‘Alltrans and especially for
the MinCa 26 of which some 100 units were
delivered.
After these initial successes, new technologies for
underground mining were developed in
collaboration with German mines from the end of
the 1970s. The backfilling technique with slinger
belt was one of these new technologies allowing
mines for the first time to backfill mined out areas.
A key development was a dry exhaust gas cooling
system for flame-proofed diesel engines which
makes for almost maintenance-free operation.
Right from the start, Paus used the relatively new
technology of hydrostatic drives avoiding the
overheating of mechanical brakes by using
internal force. This effect made it possible to use
rubber-tyred vehicles in flame-proofed areas. In
1984, Paus developed the first electro-hydraulic
25 t dump truck which was operated by a 1,000 V
pantograph.
During his active working life, Hermann Paus has
made his name not only by the developments
described here, but above all by constantly
designing new individual solutions for underground
mining transportation tasks – a competence which
still characterises his company today.
Between 1996 and 2002, Hermann Paus was
also a Board Member of the German Mining
Machinery Association.
In 2001, Hermann Paus was honoured with the
order ‘Bergmansehre II Stufe’ by the Mining
Ministry of the Russian Federation, recognising
his contributions to Russian mining.
Then in honour of his 70th birthday in 2002, he
became an honorary faculty member in the
Belarus Mining Academy in Minsk. Also in 2002,
he handed over the reins of the company to his
two sons, Wolfgang and Franz-Josef, and since
then, the business of Hermann Paus GmbH has
been successfully continued by his two sons.
MinCa 26
In the 1980s, Hermann Paus then made a name
for himself with the introduction of trackless
transport techniques in German hard coal mining.
For the first time in Germany, flame-proofed
vehicles equipped with rubber tyres were used for
the transportation of roof supports. On the basis
of this development, roof supports up to 50 t are
still transported with these vehicles today.
Further machines for mining introduced by Paus were
personnel transporters and graders for road maintenance.
Vladimir Kuryanov, a former broker and agent
who worked extensively with Paus states: “With a
feeling of deep respect and with the warmest and
best regards, I would like to mention the merits of
Hermann Paus and talk about his contribution the
to development of Russian-German economic
relations in the field of the Russian mining
industry. The company's first products earned an
excellent reputation in the market of the Soviet
Union and, later, in the post-Soviet countries.
Since the middle of the 1970s to the end of the
1980s the equipment of Paus practically had a
monopoly in the Russian market due to its
performance. But it was the delivery of Paus