GERMAN TECHNOLOGY
provides fully refurbished products that provide the same performance, quality and service life as new MTU products. MTU also offers remote services to support the effective operation of the customer’ s systems and optimised maintenance services. MTU provides support throughout the entire life-cycle, even for traditional products such as the Detroit Diesel 2-stroke product line.”
Zoning and tracking for safety nanotron Technologies’“ swarm bee” meets compliance for mining operations by featuring collision avoidance, zoning and tracking. Solutions for operator safety around continuous mining machines, collision avoidance solutions for mining vehicles and real-time tracking of miners are now available on a single radio platform – the swarm bee product family from nanotron Technologies.
“ There are three major safety components that have to be covered by a Proximity Detection System( PDS): proximity-based Collision Avoidance( CAS), precise Tracking and freely configurable Operator Safety Zoning. All three of these safety components together provide a comprehensive safety solution. To converge all three components into a standard platform is challenging. But using discrete solutions for each application is bulky, expensive and inefficient.” nanotron says that one common location signal for the technologies enables the most efficient and reliable architecture for a PDS in the industry. Real-time capabilities translate directly into safety.“ swarm bee allows all three mining safety components to run simultaneously and to meet the current mining safety standards. An Application Programming Interface( API) and pin compatibility for different radio types are part of the futureproof concept called swarm bee. CHIRP and / or UWB are deployed seamlessly.”
With tags based on swarm bee, miners get an extremely fast feedback from the environment if and only when needed. At the same time, mining operators get a comprehensive real-time mine management overview.
The key challenges for a Collision Avoidance System is how ultra-low latency can be guaranteed to exceed compliance for miner safety, whilst at the same time proving sufficient capacity for managing crowded situations with many vehicles and pedestrians. This must all be accomplished with very low tag power.“ swarm bees’ ultra-fast time-of-flight measurement provides the shortest airtime available today of less than 2 ms resulting in excellent response time. This is supported by listen before talk technology, supporting up to 275 CAS distance measurements per second in the same area thus providing consistent performance in crowded situations.”
For tracking applications the challenges are also considerable, particularly during changes of shifts where there are large numbers of personnel entering and exiting the mine. Managing the volume of people whilst providing consistent accuracy in real-time are the key requirements.“ nanotron’ s reader products and supporting software deliver highest accuracy through a patented over the air synchronisation method. The high throughput system provides 350 location values per second. The solution scales in both space and number of tags.” nanotron reader and swarm bee products offer bidirectional communication and thus efficient feedback in real-time for messaging and alarms. All this functionality is supported with ultra-low power modes, resulting in tag battery life of one year or more. swarm bee zoning products enable exclusion zones that are fixed or dynamic, with safety regions defined with an accuracy of up to 10 cm.“ nanotron’ s eco system blazes the way for incredibly rapid system integration. It leverages mining productivity immensely by enabling add-ons like safety by visibility, historic movement data as well as management of traffic / fuel, ambulance, resources, alarms and more.”
Finally, nanotron’ s system integrator ATUT is specialised in solutions for coal and hard rock mining. The high performance tracking system features a modular design, high precision location, flexible text messaging, intuitive visualisation( 2D, 1D and 0D) and access over the web.
Summarising, the company states that swarm bee enables miner safety and productivity by offering one PDS system for nanotron Technologies’“ swarm bee” meets compliance for mining operations by featuring collision avoidance, zoning and tracking
concurrent CAS, Tracking and Operator Safety Zones.“ swarm bee is ready for ATEX, MSHA, IECEx and MA certification, speeding-up time to market.”
Ramping up sample preparation
RETSCH GmbH, a world-leading supplier of lab equipment for sample homogenisation and sieve analysis – has enhanced its product range with a complete line of instruments for applications with large feed sizes and high throughput rates. The new program has been integrated into the existing product line under the name of“ XL” and it says complements it in many areas. Now RETSCH offers, for example, a series of jaw crushers with feed sizes from 40 mm to 350 x 170 mm. The new XL models of ball mills, vibratory disc mills and sample dividers provide a substantially higher throughput than the
RETSCH has enhanced its product range with a complete line of instruments for applications with large feed sizes and high throughput rates
48 International Mining | MARCH 2017