Hello Ironman..

Yes you can blend this way, but it won't be very well defined blending.

This is because even with variable speed compensation, the reclaim rate varies somewhat as you traverse the bucket wheel through the pile's cross section. The graph of capacity vs time looks a bit like a sine wave.

So if you have two bucket wheel reclaimers operating on two separate piles simultaneously, the sine waves will go in and out of synchronisation, thereby varying your blend from good when in sync and bad when they are not.

Work on a 25% sine wave fluctuation (each) if you want to do some sums.

It works best for blending with the drum type full face reclaimers

Cheers

LSL Tekpro ■

Have seen this done with aggregate by having multiple bins with vibrating feeders layering material on a single belt.

In your case, if the reclaimers feed onto their own belts which then feed onto the blending conveyor, you could have at the transfer point to the blending belt, two surge hoppers each with a feeder to feed at the required blending rate. ■

Hello JD..

Indeed you can have surge bins to remove the fluctuations, and we did exactly that not so long ago at Saldanha Bay here in South Africa.

The trouble is though that bucket wheel reclaimers are capable of very high reclaim rates, and for ironing out the surges the surge bin capacities can become very large for the bigger machines. You tend to end up with expensive belt feeders under them to get the capacity as well.

In such a case it would often be be wiser to use double bridge-bucket wheel reclaimers. These give you the high capacity, whilst at the same time achieving much more even flow, which can then easily be blended downstream.

Cheers

LSL Tekpro ■