Not Applicable
Not Applicable
1. Field of Invention
This invention relates to the use of robotic technology in mining industry, specifically in electrometallurgical and industrial processes.
2. Prior Art
The electrodeposition process is one of the current and simplest methods to recover, in a pure and selective way, the metals in a solution This process mainly uses the permanent cathodes or base plates, which are deposited in tanks for a determined period of time and through the electrometallurgical process, the metal in the solution starts to deposit in the walls of the plate until reaching a determined weight. Once the weight is reached, the cathodes are retrieved (harvest) through an operation carried out by the bridge crane, which takes the volume of cathodes of each cell and moves them to the scrubbing tunnel. From the scrubbing tunnel the cathodes pass to the stripping machine where the copper is finally separated from the base plates.
As a result of this process the base plates deteriorates on a continuous basis which is caused by the chemical (corrosion) or mechanical (bending, and hammering during stripping) effects. Due to this, the base plates should be constantly subjected to repair where the surface is polished and the insulation is replaced.
At present, the maintenance of the base plates is carried out manually, which presents high maintenance costs and low quality levels. This causes the electrodeposition process to have low quality base plates that affect the efficiency of the process.
A robotic system has been developed for the maintenance of the base plates where one robotic arm polishes the base plate then a second robotic arm replaces their insulation in an automated way.
In the drawings, closely related figures share the same numbers, with different alphabetic suffixes.
1. Robotic manipulator
2. Gripping mechanism
3. Polishing device
4. Robotic manipulator
5. Gripping mechanism
This invention refers to a new robot system for the maintenance of base plates in electrometallurgical and industrial processes, where the polishing and replacement of base plates is carried out automatically.
With reference to
Additionally the system could be integrated into a single manipulator which has the two functions. The configuration of one or two manipulators will depend on the flow of base plates to be subjected to maintenance.
This application claims the benefit of provisional patent application Ser. No. 60/734,982 filed 2005 Nov. 10 by the present inventor
Number | Date | Country | |
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60734982 | Nov 2005 | US |