The mining industry has built many complex pieces of machinery to extract resources such as diamonds, coal, and other metals. In the process of extracting diamonds from mines, a sorting system is set up to separate the gems from the dirt they lie in. This sorting system consists of three stages: the first being separation by size, the second separating by color, and the third sorting through magnetism.
In surface mining, the overburden (rock or soil that covers a coal deposit) is removed from an area of ground with some type of machineries such as a shovel loader or front-end loader and deposited at another location nearby.
The machinery used to dig out the coal is called a dragline. The dragline is an extremely large piece of machinery, but there are other pieces of equipment that are used to help extract the minerals from the ground. Tilt-tray cars and ball mills are two pieces of machinery that can be used in surface mining.
Tilt-tray cars are basically small rail cars with a conveyor belt running along the bottom. These cars scoop up the soil and rock as they move across the strip mine. The cars are then tilted at a 45-degree angle, and the material slides down into the ball mill.
The ball mill is like a huge cement mixer that pulverizes the rock and soil that falls into it. The fine powdery substance that comes out of the ball mills is known as overburden, or “over” for short. These over cars need to be filled at a five to one ratio with dirt.
The ball mills are also able to help extract small rocks from the coal and help reduce dust which allows for better visibility throughout the mines. They also grind down the rock before shipping, which takes up less room on rail cars and trucks transporting the coal from mine sites.
This post was written by Justin Tidd, Director at https://beckersmcusa.com/. For nearly a [*fr1] a century, Becker Mining has been at the forefront of mine electrical systems. Becker/SMC is that the industry’s leader in additional} more subtle electrical management systems. Most of the foremost innovations, style options and specialised electrical parts are developed by Becker/SMC.
