Patent Application
20070152384
Not Applicable
Not Applicable
1. Field of The Invention
This invention relates to the use of robotic technology in mining industry, specifically in the recovery of scrap material.
2. Prior Art
During metal obtaining and refining processes, smelting furnaces are used to cast metal concentrates for purifying and extracting them. The first stage of the productive process is to move the dry concentrate to one of these furnaces, which could be a flash furnace and/or a Teniente converter, where casting is at temperatures over 1.200° C. In this way, while the concentrate becomes a molten liquid mass, its components are being separated and combined then to form a two layer bath. The heaviest layer is called matte and it is a metal enriched component. Over this layer, the slag is floating, which is a coat of impurities of the metal of interest. In this way and during successive stages, the stage rich in the metal of interest is sequentially cast and refined through several furnaces which allows to obtain a high purity metal.
In the last stage of the smelting process, the fire refining stage is carried out in which the metal is processed in rotary furnaces, by adding special purifying agents which are called fluidizing agents to oxide and eliminate all the impurities with the resulting effect of very few non desired elements contained in the molten bath. Then, the oxygen is extracted with steam or oil injections with the final result of a high purity level. Thus, when a metal load reaches the required purity level, the furnace is inclined and in exact quantities the metal is poured in one of the ingot molds of the fire refined mold casting wheel. Once the metal is poured into the mold, the wheel rotates to advance the following mold to the position and other ingot is molded. This way, the wheel speed is adjusted in an accurate way to the optimum speed profile, ensuring a smooth positive and negative acceleration level of the molds. This is intended to produce high quality ingots with a minimum burr formation grade.
To finish the smelting process, the dislodging process (stripping and/or extraction) proceeds in which the molded ingots are lifted and sent to a cooling tank to avoid the excessive oxidation and to obtain a deep scrubbing.
Finally, the molded ingots are counted and arranged in predetermined bundles.
One of the major disadvantages of the tasks associated to the ingots bundling process from the mold casting wheels is the exposure of the personnel to harsh environmental conditions. This, in the medium and long term, could generate serious occupational diseases to the operators in charge of carrying out such task.
Due to the above, a robot system and method have been developed to automate the procedure of fire refined bundling.
A robot system comprised of two manipulators to handle ingots, while one robot takes the ingot from the casting wheel to the water bath to cool off, the second manipulator takes the cooled off ingot to the bundling area.
In the drawings, closely related figures share the same numbers, with different alphabetic suffixes.
1 Robotic manipulator of at least 5 degrees of freedom
2 Fixed and/or mobile mounting system
3 Gripping mechanism
4 Ingot
5 Bundling area
This invention relates to a new robot system as well as a robotic method for fire refined bundling procedures, which are mainly composed of an anthropomorphous robotic manipulator of at least 5 degrees of freedom, with a gripping mechanism, so the robotic system itself is designed to take, manipulate and release ingots.
With reference to
This application claims the benefit of provisional patent application Ser. No. 60/734,988 filed 2005 Nov. 10 by the present inventor
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 60734988 | Nov 2005 | US |
