Re: Automated Load Out
I think you are right to be happy. 400lbs is not a lot considering the fair old drop to the body floor & the feed rate. You need that slack because the axle loading feedback probably does not account for the load shifting at the first red light. You have a good operation as long as the swipe cards stay clean. Liverpool & Felixtowe Ports, in UK, have had plenty of teething troubles with the printer rolls in the weight ticket printers, true. Tailbacks longer than we care to imagine. Since you are happy you must have sorted out the problems over there. Very well done Our Kid.
Is the 1400 tph the peak conveying rate or the truck hauled rate? Either way it's not bad! ■
John Gateley johngateley@hotmail.com www.the-credible-bulk.com
Re: Automated Load Out
I think Kanawhascales and Systems has done similar type of systems,they have also done pretty nos. of systems in wagon load out stations and has got more then 70% of entire world's market.
Anil ■
Re: Automated Load Out
John,
1400 tph is the peak across the belt scale. As for the cards, they are RFID and not magnetic swipe. I'm not familiar with truck drivers in the UK, but our yankee drivers can tear up anvils with rubber mallets. The RFID cards are more expensive, but are short range non contact. They register on the reader when they get within about 10 cm. We had two cards fail when someone decided to staple through them, but other than a few startup pains, the system seems to be truck driver proof ( or at least truck driver resistant ). Thanks for the kind words! ■
Re: Automated Load Out
Hello anil,
I've seen one of the Kanawha systems at a mine in Indiana, and you are quite correct as it is a good system. The major difference between our system and the Kanawha system is our use of a belt scale for loading. The Kanawha system I saw, was a loss in weight hopper system with a surge bin and weigh bin. I dont believe the Kanawha system used truck tare weights, but instead gave net loading only. ■
Load Out Control
Hi Todd,
That is very impressive. Residence time of trucks in the quarry is always a key issue. Does the truck scale feed back to your system and give a correction value to compensate for any error? Also in systems we have installed we sometimes introduce a trickle feed to make up to the final demanded amount. A little more loadout time is better that having to tip off or make up the load.
If you have made a system that is really truck driver resistant then I take my hat off to you.
Jon Scarrott ■
Re: Automated Load Out
Jon,
The mine was more concerned with truck time on property rather than get precise loading. The feed back from the truck scale for the gross would be nice, but they are content with running material tests when the loads get out of tolerance. (about every 3 months) The belt scale electronics are built around a Rice Lake 920i controller. I wrote the code for the load out and added the set point specific code to our standard belt scale program. The problem with changing the system to feedback the net weights is the serial data from the truck scale system. The unattend truck scale is a standard Rice Lake ATS2 system with a factory change to send the truck id and tare weights. It would require a change from Rice Lake to their end of the system. I originally offered the dual speed loading, but the mine decided it was more economical to use a single position gate.
It looks like I may get the chance to build a second load out that I can add a few features at another coal mine. Some of the changes I want to add are scoreboard displays rather than stop lights, and hopefully the dribble loading you mentioned. ■
Automated Load Out
Hello All,
We recently installed a belt scale to load trucks at a Coal Mine in Illinois, the system is operated by the drivers by scanning RFID cards through out the operation. The load out is centered around a single idler belt scale with the legal weights from a truck scale. The link from the truck scale to the load out is wireless. The trucks are loading in about 40-50 seconds at 1400 tph. The loading has been holding within 400 lbs. of the setpoints. Please post any comments or questions, as we are pretty happy with the results.
http://www.kvsco.com/pgm-downloadme...dLoadOut.ppt ■