Geology

Variable feeders for stockpiling

After Komatsu’s acquisition of Joy Mining in 2017 to form Komatsu Mining, the company significantly expanded its product line to include a range of handling, processing, conveying and crushing products.

According to Daniel Hurse, Komatsu’s product support manager for crushing, the company can draw on a heritage of more than 100 years of processing systems development. This gives it the expertise to provide materials handling solutions suitable for a wide range of quarrying, mining and civil construction applications.

“Our range of Joy reclaim feeders are ideal for quarry stockpile operations and aggregates handling across a wide range of product types and mixes,” he said.

Joy reclaim feeders provide volumetric metering of stockpiled aggregates using a drag-chain conveyor.

Typically, reclaim feeders are surge-loaded with material, which then feeds onto a conveyor belt, Hurse says.

“Reclaim feeders act as the transition between batch haulage and continuous haulage, and are capable of being loaded using a range of equipment types, including dozers, wheel loaders, dump trucks, belt conveyors, or excavators,” he said.

“No hopper is required for reclaim feeder operation, as the material being fed creates its own stockpile around the intake.”

He said Joy’s range of reclaim feeders could be supplied in varying configurations of conveyor widths, intake lengths, and discharge heights. Throughput can range from 40 tonnes per hour (tph) up to 4000 tph, depending on material density; it can be varied using either an adjustable flow gate on the intake end or a variable speed drive.

“A common practice is to stockpile different products on separate reclaim feeders, which can load the material on the belt as required by the mix specifications,” he said.

Hurse says reclaim feeders have a very low installation cost, as they only require flat, level ground to operate.

“They are skid-mounted, which allows them to be easily moved around a worksite using the loading equipment,” he said. “It’s simply a matter of setting the reclaim feeder in position, supplying power and begin feeding.”

Source: Komatsu Mining

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