If you want to mechanize diamond mining on a large scale, you have to come up with a mechanized mining plan that supports it.
This is a long research and development process that needs to be developed from scratch, bit by bit in mining practice, and slowly improved.
For example, in a brown coal mine in Hamburg, Germany, in order to increase production capacity to the limit, the engineers specially designed and built the world's largest single piece of construction machinery – the 293 Ladle Wheel Excavator.
When this excavating machine was activated, it could excavate close to 150,000 tons of coal per day.
The engineers took mechanized mining to the limit.
But from the design to the manufacturing of this steel behemoth, the engineers spent a total of five years.
Five years to build a steel behemoth, and this was still under the condition that the engineers had a large number of similar mining equipment to learn from, and this equipment only needed a simple rotation of the winch to mine.
How long would it take to design a set of diamond mining equipment without any design ideas to learn from?
Very soon.
Because of the intervention of the [Virtual Factory 5.0].
The last upgrade of the Monster Factory allowed the Dragon Creek Beach factory to obtain the Virtual Factory 5.0 system. This system was equivalent to giving a group of cold machines a soul and they could think for themselves. In the virtual world, through tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of different combinations, they could find the best combination of processes for all the machines in the factory.
The machine gradually produced fatal tolerances during operation, and the system automatically calibrated.
During the processing process, every detail of the product was checked by the system to minimize the impact of human operation.
For a very simple example, when a machine tool leaves the factory, the manufacturer often gives it a theoretical processing accuracy limit. But in actual use, this extreme precision could not be processed at all. Because in the work of the machine tool, there were too many factors that could affect the precision, even small changes in the temperature of the workshop could affect it.
But in the Virtual Factory system, these effects were all removed.
No change could escape the system's sensing and measurement, and these changes would be automatically adjusted and compensated by the system.
Since …
The Virtual Factory system could automatically reorganize the machines in the factory and find the best solution.
Then, with the geological conditions and landform drop coordinates of the three diamond mines known, the Virtual Factory could, of course, find the most scientific mining plan through rigorous simulation experiments in the virtual world.
…
With the Virtual Factory online.
In front of Ye Qing, rows of graphical bars similar to game menus appeared.
Instead of displaying skills, there were machine tools, smelting equipment of various shapes, and construction machinery displayed on the screen. In addition to these, there were also all the industrial products in the Dragon Creek Beach factory and all the auxiliary processing robots.
A Mechanical Colossus Type X was dragged out of the graphics bar by Ye Qing. As soon as the icon fell on one of the three diamond mines, the icon immediately unfolded and turned into a real Mechanical Colossus Type X that was the same size as the diamond mine.
The Mechanical Colossus Type X is at the feet of Ye Qing, only the size of a cigarette box. It stopped at the edge of the diamond mine, looking so insignificant.
But if you really drive a Mechanical Colossus Type X there, it is no different from the reduced model in front of you, regardless of the height on the edge of the diamond mine.
Ye Qing pulled his hands, and the surrounding terrain and the Mechanical Colossus Type X quickly enlarged and became as high as Ye Qing.
In this way, it was easy to observe, and then a mining loader, the mining truck was dragged out by Ye Qing and placed behind the Mechanical Colossus Type X in order.
The materials of the two construction vehicles were taken from the metal ore mine on the side of the Nigeria plant, and the final counterattack iron ore crushing tower was used as a finishing touch.
Ye Qing set the crushing diameter of the counterattack iron ore crushing tower to 60 millimeters.
This crushing tower is a two-chamber structure. It can easily crush the ore fragments that are not more than eight Mohs hardness into pieces of uniform fist-sized stones.
The discharge conveyor belt divides the fragments and powders, and the uniform stones after being crushed are screened out and left from the fragments, while the powders and soil are left from the powders.
Large-scale mechanized operations, of course, it is impossible to learn from the indigenous people and only pick up soft soil and gravel to manually screen diamonds. In Ye Qing's plan, any object in the three diamond mines must be screened.
The rock belts buried underground and the mountain at the border were the best targets for screening.
The Mechanical Colossus Type X mines soil and rocks, and the loader and transport vehicles are responsible for transporting the minerals to the inlet of the crushing tower.
The crushing tower is responsible for breaking them into uniform stones.
This process does not require any thought to design. Monster Industries has several mines, and the equipment can be moved from that mine to be used on the spot.
Fluorite has a Mohs hardness of four.
Feldspar has a hardness of six.
Quartz, granite, and basalt have a hardness of seven.
Topaz has a hardness of eight.
The hardness of various minerals and rocks in nature is usually between four and seven. The crushing tower can crush ore with a hardness of no more than eight, and the hardness of diamonds is the highest, reaching ten.
Therefore, the crushing tower cannot destroy diamonds. As long as diamonds are contained in the fragments processed by it, they will remain intact in the fragments.
The last step was to sift out the diamonds from the debris.
Ye Qing's idea is to start with hardness.
Since diamonds are the hardest objects in the world, can a device be designed that can process all rock fragments with a hardness of nine and below into particles with a diameter of no more than two millimeters?
If so, the diamond with a hardness of ten can be completely separated from these fragments.
It is only necessary to design a screening device with a screening diameter of no more than two millimeters. After the granular fragments are screened and separated, the remaining 100% is diamond.
At this time, Dian Jing took out a model from his pocket.
This is a diamond separation device that it hastily designed according to Ye Qing's ideas.
The model was thrown to the ground and suddenly turned into a rectangular mechanical equipment nearly three meters high. Referring to the Mechanical Colossus Type X next to it, its real height should be about 20 meters.
"Boss, according to your idea, this separator uses the principle of a hammer crusher. It can hammer fist-sized ores into granules through a hammer table driven by hydraulic power."
"The hydraulic drive force has been adjusted to just the strength to crush topaz."
"Is it too simple..." Ye Qing looked at the rectangular mechanical equipment and kept muttering in his heart. "Logically speaking, our idea is right. The strength of the hammer table is not enough to break the diamond. But such a simple plan, I don't think it makes sense that other engineers can't think of it. "
"There should be no problem. It may be that the engineers can design the plan, but they can't come up with the corresponding material solution." Dian Jing bit his finger and pointed to the miniaturized diamond mine on the ground. "In the three diamond mines, I have added diamonds that are randomly distributed with a probability of one in 100,000."
"These diamonds are directly copied from the factory's diamond inventory. Now they are hidden in the ore. Let's try it."
Ye Qing was no longer entangled. "Let's try it first."
Ye Qing chose to start the simulation.
Just after the selection, the Mechanical Colossus Type X on the edge of the diamond mine suddenly started. After a short warm-up, it did not hesitate to crash into the mountain not far away.
Tons of rock fragments were easily smashed from the mountain by it.
These rocks were loaded into mining trucks by the loader and finally tilted into the counterattack iron ore crushing tower.
The crushing tower roared!
After continuing to zoom in on the details, tons of fragments and powders are constantly ejecting.
Among these fragments, there were specks of red glowing particles scattered all over.
That is a diamond. Dian Jing deliberately added self-luminous properties to these diamonds so that they are easy to identify.
When the fragments entered the diamond separating equipment, Ye Qing and Dian Jing couldn't help but clench their fists.
Boom ~
The hammer table in the diamond separating equipment smashed down on the shards.
During the first crushing operation, Ye Qing and Dian Jing only heard the noise and couldn't see what was happening inside. During the second operation, Ye Qing quickly made the shell of the diamond separating equipment transparent and enlarged it on the hammer table.
Now in front of Ye Qing, there were fist-sized rock fragments spread out. Ye Qing could clearly see three luminous bodies in this pile of fragments.
The hammer table fell for the third time.
Then …
The luminous bodies changed from three to dozens …
Because when the hammer fell, not only did it shatter the rocks, but it also shattered three peanut-sized diamonds along the way.
"What's the situation?" Ye Qing was a little caught off guard by this result. "Didn't I tell you before to use a softer metal for the hammer table material?"
Dian Jing looked innocent. "I did it."
Ye Qing and Dian Jing understood the principle that things break easily when they are too hard.
Diamonds are the strongest objects in the world. No metal can leave a scratch on its surface, but this doesn't mean that it won't break.
For example, the hardness of general steel is about 5.5 on the Mohs scale.
What would happen if this steel hammer was used to hit a piece of granite with a hardness of 7?
Of course, the granite would be smashed by the hammer because the ductility of granite is far lower than that of a hammer.
If this hammer was used to hit a diamond, the extremely hard but ductile diamond would also shatter.
That was why Ye Qing asked Dian Jing to use a softer metal as the hammer table. But he had already taken corresponding measures, so why did the diamond still shatter?
Fortunately, this was a simulation experiment, and Ye Qing could make adjustments in time. "Continue to increase the softness of the hammer table by 10% and repeat the action just now."
This time, one of the diamonds broke.
The softness was automatically increased, and the experiment continued.
With a ton of fragments each time, the hammer table worked 11 times, and nine diamonds of different sizes were separated.
These diamonds were all intact, but Ye Qing and Dian Jing didn't show the smile on their faces.
A new problem had arisen.
Although the softness of the hammer table was perfectly balanced with the diamond, the hammer table, which automatically stopped when it touched the diamond, also lost the ability to continue working on the rock that was at the same level as the diamond.
In other words, the size of the diamond obtained was the same as the size of the broken rock particles.
And after many times of work, the surface of the hammer table, which was made of soft metal, had a layer of dents caused by the rocks and diamonds.
You've already exceeded your reading limit for today. If you want to read more, please log in.
Login
Select text and click 'Report' to let us know about any bad translation.
