Patent Application
20100091103
The present invention relates to a user interface of a mineral material processing equipment. Such an equipment comprises a mineral material processing line to which raw mineral material is fed and in which it is transported through subsequent processing steps such as crushing and screening. The mineral processing equipment in which the present invention can be used comprises as a rule feeding, crushing, and screening machines, and conveyors transporting the material to be processed between various processing steps and conveyors discharging processed material from the process.
Mineral material means in this context any material of rock origin which need not necessary be valuable materials because of their mineral composition but could be rock of low value which need to be comminuted to a smaller size for use as construction purposes or for other purposes. It can also be waste material containing mineral material at least partly, such as deconstruction waste (e.g. bricks, concrete, asphalt and the like).
The invention also relates to a user interface of a waste material processing equipment. Waste material can be every material that is discharged after its use and that is comminuted and/or compressed to reduce its size. Waste processing equipment contains similarities to mineral processing equipment in that it contains a processing step and transporting material to be processed to the processing step and transporting processed material away from the processing step, possibly towards another processing step. The product of the waste processing can be disposed as waste (final disposal) or used for recycling. The waste material can be metal, rubber, plastic, glass, or any mixture of these, or any other material. Car bodies are one example of waste material that is commonly processed.
The control of mineral material processing aims at remote control of several machines connected in series. It is the purpose that the user does not need to go to the machine in order to follow its operation or to give commands to the machine, which would require extra labour and could be even dangerous in some instances. For example if a disturbance or malfunction occurs in the process, it is better to see the cause in advance at a remote control point such as in a driver's cabin or a control room so that appropriate measures can be taken, and the problem may be even resolved without going to the site of disturbance or malfunction. The direct visual observation of the equipment may also become difficult, if the equipment is placed under a cover to shield the environment from airborne material (dust) caused by the processing. The purposes of the control of waste material processing equipment are largely the same, except that the equipment may consist of one single machine.
The control of a crushing machine from a remote control point is known from the Japanese publication JP-8-155326. In this document, the cabin of an excavator which supplies a crushing machine is equipped with a control panel 56 connected to the actuators of the crushing machine, i.e. solenoid valves 37, 38. The cabin also comprises a video survey monitor 49 connected to a video camera 32 that monitors the crusher. The video camera is controlled through another control panel 50 in the cabin. In this arrangement, the driver of an excavator can control the process by the remote control device. A similar idea is presented by the Japanese publication JP-1-168363, where the operator in a cabin of a loading machine can see the condition of the crusher on a monitor screen and control the speed of the feeding conveyor through remote control.
Finnish utility model no. 5905 shows a display device, which is located for example at the driver's cabin of an excavator and can be used to see various alarms, pressures, speeds, the status of the engine, feeding rates, etc. of a machine in a mineral material processing plant. The user of the display device can also set various values by entering corresponding data in the display device, e.g. change the pressure limits or change the operating values, for example when the material to be fed is changed. The display device is coupled in a wireless manner to a field bus connecting the sensors and actuators of the machine, and it comprises keys and/or buttons for influencing the actuators of the machine. The display device can be connected to several machines of the mineral material processing plant.
Japanese publication 8-299821 shows a control method for supplying raw ore to a jaw crusher, where a CCD camera is used for observing the grain size of the ore entering the crusher. The camera takes continuously pictures of the raw ore for an automatic control system, which by image processing decides if the grain size is so large that the grain size must be given priority over the ore level in the crusher detected by the level sensor in adjusting the feeding rate. The apparatus comprises a TV monitor for inspection of the pictures taken and it is not necessary for the automatic operation of the control system.
US Patent Application Publication 2004/0200914 shows an operating panel in a cab of a loader which loads objects to be crushed to a crusher. The operating panel comprises buttons for operating the crusher and a monitor 30 for graphically displaying the load condition of the crusher. The upper half of the monitor is made up by a screen 31 which can display the load condition graphically to the operator. The lower half of the monitor is made up by a touch type display operation switch panel 32 for selecting the working modes and settings of the crusher.
In solutions of prior art, for overall control of a mineral material processing line from a remote point, attention must be paid separately to the remote control device, load condition display, various alarms based on light or sound, and the video survey monitor. This requires extra attention for the human operator especially in a driver's cabin of mobile loading machine which supplies the mineral raw material to the processing line. Further, a driver's cabin is a place where space is limited for installing various devices.
It is an object of the invention to provide a sophisticated solution which simplifies the work of an operator which controls and monitors the mineral or waste material processing equipment and which especially needs to get knowledge of the status of various parts of the equipment and also visual on-line information. It is also the object of the invention to provide a system through which the operator can learn to better manage the process. To solve the problems of prior art and to attain the aforementioned purpose, the present invention is mainly characterized in that the user interface is arranged to show within the display screen, by choice of the user
The operator in the control point, such as in the driver's cabin, can concentrate his attention on one single screen when keeping watch over and controlling the process. It is thus possible to see the real situation on some selected spots as well as the status of the process in diagrammatic representation without a need to change the monitoring device. The live camera view can be shown whenever desired by the operator on the screen that is normally displaying an on-line page. In addition to the manual selection of the camera view, the camera view can appear automatically, for example as a “pop-up” window, when some predetermined limit in a condition of the process is attained, this limit defining a critical state, “attention state” where attention should be paid to the spot concerned.
The operator can use the same user interface for controlling the process by giving various commands. The user interface according to the invention is a compact device which fits well in a control point where available space is limited, especially in a driver's cabin.
The status of the mineral or waste processing equipment is usually the loading status or the condition of the equipment. Thus, the user interface can be used for on-line surveillance of the load of various parts caused by the process, or for on-line surveillance of the general condition of various parts to evaluate if need exists for maintenance and repair.
According to a preferred embodiment of the invention, in the process there are several distinct spots that can be visually inspected through the camera allocated for the spot. Thus, the operator can choose among several camera views which show a live situation on different spots along the mineral material or waste material processing line, or any of these views can activate automatically when a predetermined limit in the process conditions related to the spot in question is reached. The cameras are placed so that they cover the points of the equipment that are the most critical, for example where problems or disturbances in the flow or processing of the material are most likely to occur (feeding, transporting, screening, crushing). An individual camera view is arranged to appear within a window that constitutes a partial view on the screen so that it does not cover the whole screen area. It is possible for the operator to select the suitable camera settings (size and place of the window on the page) in advance on a so-called camera settings page. The showing of two or more camera views, which represent different spots, simultaneously on the screen is also possible.
The user interface also includes several possibilities to arrange a view of the screen so that the status of several sections or units of the mineral processing line, such as different machines of the equipment, can be monitored simultaneously in the same view on the screen as a diagrammatic representation. For example, if the sections or units of the equipment are two or more machines in series (with regard to the material flow through the processing line), the view can show the data of two or three machines in discrete screen areas, for example arranged in fields, “boxes” next to each other. The operator can configure these pages by choosing the most important parameters related to the status of the equipment that are to be shown simultaneously in a particular view. These parameters are chosen from an online page configuration page, which contains a list of several parameters.
The interface also contains control buttons and keys for controlling the functions of the user interface itself, for example selecting the views, but it can also contain control buttons and keys for giving commands to the process. These can be separate from the screen but integrated in the display device incorporating the screen. According to a preferred embodiment, the control buttons and keys can be made part of the screen, that is, the screen is a touch screen. In this case the control buttons and keys can be icons or symbols of some kind that can be activated by touching them. Alternatively or in addition to this arrangement, the control buttons and keys can also be activatable, “clickable”, by an external control tool such as a mouse or joystick.
Still one useful function of the user interface is messages during the use in form of text fields. These messages can inform the operator about the status of various points and they can contain suggestions or instructions for measures that should be taken. These can be arranged as “alarm pop-up frames” that will appear in similar cases as the camera views (some point of the processing line has attained an “attention state”), but they may represent different spots than covered by the cameras, for example spots that are inaccessible to cameras.
According to one advantageous embodiment of the user interface, the operator can see the speed of the mineral material processing in easily perceivable diagrammatic symbols, such as “traffic lights”. Such symbols can be allocated for each unit (machine) connected in series with respect to the material flow. The operator can learn and gain experience of the behaviour of the process through these symbols and other diagrammatic representations of various parameters.
The invention will be described in more detail with reference to the accompanying drawings, where
Furthermore, the plant comprises three units for the processing of mineral materials, which are separate processing machines coupled together so that the feeding or loading machine A feeds the first machine (primary unit), i.e. a crushing machine B, and the material processed by the crushing machine B is conveyed to the next machine (secondary unit), another crushing machine C, and from there to a third machine (tertiary unit), a combined crushing and screening machine D. Both the feeding or loading machine A and the processing machines B, C, D are self-propelled, track-mounted machines. The primary unit may contain jaw crusher as the preliminary crusher and the secondary unit may contain a cone crusher as the intermediate crusher. The material is conveyed between the feeding point, crushers, screens and discharge points by conveyors. The loading machine A can be a mobile loading machine of any kind that can supply material to the feeding point (feed hopper) of the primary unit B.
The field bus 6 is connected to control modules which are connected to sensors, limit switches, safety switches, control buttons, etc. The modules are provided with a data processing capacity of their own; that is, they are “intelligent” to some extent. The equipment may have a control module of the hydraulic system (hydraulic control module, HCM), an engine control module (ECM), and a control module for the actuators, such as the feeder, the crusher, the screen, the conveyor, the magnetic separator, and the driving tracks (device control modules, DCM). A separate engine bus connects the engine control module with the engine.
The control module collects and processes information and delivers it to the field bus, wherein the other control modules can read the information, if they need it. The field bus is connected to a transmitter/receiver (transceiver) unit 13 which is arranged to transmit information transferred via the bus in a wireless manner to a user interface in the remote control point A1, i.e. a display having a display screen 14, whose function is to be described later in detail. According to a preferred embodiment, the user interface also has control buttons or keys for entering control information. The user interface is connected via an antenna 15 to the transceiver unit 13 in the machine. The data traffic of the bus between the transceiver unit 13 of the machine and the user interface takes place in a wireless manner; in other words, the wireless connection is, in a way, one extended part of the bus. Thus, the user interface at the remote control point can receive information about the status of the machine transmitted in the bus, which may be various measurement data given by different sensors, and by using the control buttons or keys of the user interface, the bus can be given control commands to control the actuators of the machine via the bus. All units B, C and D are connected through the common field bus and the transceiver unit 13 to the remote control point. The units B, C and D are interconnected through wireless links or through cables that make up the sections of the field bus between the units.
A video camera 16 is placed a the feeding point of the crushing machine and it is arranged to take live video image that is transmitted to the user interface along a radio link (wireless connection between the transmitter 17 of the video image and the antenna 15 of the user interface). As shown by the figure, the mineral processing line can contain two or more video cameras 16 which monitor different spots along the route of mineral material M, and one single unit can contain two or more cameras 16.
The data transmission between the video camera 16 and the user interface is bidirectional. Besides activating the camera image on the display screen, the user interface can be used to switch off and on the camera and, if the movements of the video camera 16 are remotely controllable, it can also be used to control its movements around one or several rotation axes or to zoom the camera, if the view given by the camera must be shifted or enlarged.
All data transmission, including video image, can be arranged through a common link between the remote control point A1 and the units B, C and D. This can be accomplished in practice by applying advanced networks, for example WLAN. This will make also the multi-point transmission (simultaneous transmission of all data to more than one remote control point) possible. One of these control points may be in the mobile loading machine and the other in a stationary control room. All known solutions of image data transmission may also be used, such as GPRS, 3G-technology, or web camera based technology.
The display screen 14 is the essential component of the user interface which is located in the remote control point A1 in relation to the processing units B, C, D of the equipment, such as in a driver's cabin of a mobile feeding or loading machine. The user interface is arranged to show various views or “pages” on the screen which can be accessed by the operator by selecting appropriate buttons or keys of the user interface. The term “view” may differ to a view on the whole area of the display screen or a view that covers only part of the screen, depending on the context. The whole screen view is synonymous with the concept “page”.
Further, the online page of
The different views can be accessed by activating the view mode selection 4.
By activating the view mode selection button 4 of
In addition to monitoring items, the user can select so-called control items to the field or box 22 of the unit. These items can contain the symbol for the variable to be controlled and control buttons which the user can activate for giving control commands to the unit.
The user can arrange the monitoring items and the control items in a desired order in the field or box 22 on the online page, and this can be done for each online page in the view mode 18. An example of this is shown in
The exemplary view of
An advantageous function of the user interface is the diagrammatic representation of the status of individual parts of the mineral processing line that can be seen in
Field or box 22 for unit no. 1, from top to bottom:
Box 22 for unit no. 2:
Box 22 for unit no. 3
Each diagrammatic representation of the status of a particular part is a stepwise representation, and it is colour-coded so that different states are shown by different colours, preferably green, yellow and red, which is increasing order of attention (critical condition). The representations are preferably columns (vertical or horizontal) or a so-called “traffic-light” 20, where green-yellow-red symbolism can be used. In case of the traffic light, a particularly advantageous feature is to show the symbol of the parameter requiring attention inside the red light, such as the parameter r.p.m. in
In the examples shown by the figures, the diagrammatic representation of the parameter is a so-called value bar, which is stepwise so that when the bar fills from one end to the other, the parameter changes gradually from normal to critical. Colours green, yellow and red can be used in subsequent sections of this bar to illustrate the change. A numerical value of the parameter is shown in the same small box 19 where the value bar is shown.
The field or box for unit no. 1 in
The reason for the stop may be shown as a symbol inside the red light. Some stop reasons may also activate the live camera image (if the automatic camera image activation is in use). For example high level of material that is entering a processing step in the unit may activate also the corresponding camera image in addition of stopping the feeding device. The reasons for stop function “red light” do not require special measures, because the reason for the stop is removed automatically as time passes (usually overload in some part of the machine, which is indicated by parameters such as a slow revolving speed r.p.m, high pressure, high power consumption, high temperature etc.). However, in connection of traffic lights a special “STOP” sign may be used which also indicates that the conveyor has stopped but the reason of stoppage requires special measures from the operator, and the feeding device must be restarted by a separate command.
It is also possible that every time the red light or the “STOP” sign appears in the traffic light 20, it causes the automatic activation of the camera view, provided that a camera 16 is covering the physical area in the equipment where the reason for the red light or “STOP” sign would be visible.
Because the units are connected in series with respect to the mineral material flow, a lowered processing rate or stop must always be taken into account in previous units. It is possible to adjust the mutual delays between the units by using the page shown in
The series of traffic lights 20 helps the operator to evaluate at one glance whether the processing line is working at optimum efficiency. Green lights usually mean that the processing capacity is used only partly. When the lights are yellow, it is a sign of optimum use of the capacity. Minimum speed (symbol inside the yellow light, such as turtle) indicates that capacity is about to be exceeded. Red light in any of the units means a jam of the processing line at the corresponding unit.
The traffic lights 20 help the operator to feed the mineral processing line in optimal way, and the operator can also gain experience about the response of the system to the feeding rate which he is using when loading the material to the mineral processing line. A special traffic light log space can keep statistics about the duration of each light for every unit B, C or D and record the reasons of stops (red lights) and their frequency. By studying the log page afterwards, it is possible to see what has been the efficiency of the process and which are the most common reasons for stop so that the operator can learn and adjust his way of working better to the process. The log page is also suitable for training. The log page can be accessed from a log navigation page, in turn accessible from the online page through button 9 (
It is preferable to place that cameras 16 so that they give live video image of the mineral material M that is being processed or transported in various parts of the equipment, so that the operator can monitor the behaviour of the material and see the abnormal situations detected by the control automatics with own eyes. However, it is also possible to place some cameras in other parts of the equipment where they do not image the material but some interior parts that are subject to disturbances.
The user interface may also have an audio function, and contain a speaker in addition to the display screen. The audio function can be activated or inactivated by choice of the operator by using a corresponding button. The button may be similar in function to other control buttons or keys of the user interface. It can be similar to buttons 1 to 11 and placed in the same area with them on online pages, like the online page shown in
The user interface is preferably placed in the drivers cabin of the mobile feeding or loading machine which feeds the material to the processing line that is monitored and controlled through the user interface. The operator of the user interface and the driver and operator of the feeding or loading machine is thus the same person in this case. However, it is possible that the user interface is located in a stationary control point and the mobile machine is occupied by a driver. In this case the operator of the user interface and the operator of the loading machine are different persons, which can change information by telecommunication devices. It is also possible that the feeding or loading machine is unmanned and controlled by remote control at the same control point where the user interface is located. In this case the operator of the user interface and the operator of the feeding or loading machine can be the same person.
In the foregoing detailed description, a mineral material processing equipment was shown as an example of the operation of the user interface. The user interface can also be applied to a waste material processing equipment, and all details and ideas of the user interface can be used in a waste material processing equipment that has functions analogical to a mineral processing equipment described above.
| Number | Date | Country | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|
| PCT/FI2007/050203 | Apr 2007 | FI | national |
| Filing Document | Filing Date | Country | Kind | 371c Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PCT/FI2007/050283 | 5/16/2007 | WO | 00 | 11/13/2009 |
