Design of automated loading buckets

Conclusions The study has shown the possibility of designing automated loading elements which can make the operation of machines easier, improve the dynamic conditions of work, and raise the efficiency of remote-controlled loaders. The classification of loaders according to the principle of suspension of the bucket and the corresponding schemes of placement of sensors encompasses all underground loading, unloading, and transportation machines, surface frontal loaders, and power shovels with loading units. The horizontal or tangential components of the forces of resistance to bucket advance in the rock pile or the moments from one of these forces relative to the suspension axis of the loading equipment on the gantry can be used as the main control signal; the moment from the resultant force relative to the suspension axis can also be used. Functional flowcharts of systems with automatic scooping of rock mass are suggested for loaders, transporters, frontal loaders, rock loading machines, and power shovels with bucket-type loading equipment. The choice of the placement of sensors, the signals, and the functional flowcharts of the control systems is based on experimental tests of mass-produced front-end loaders TO-1 (T-157) and TO-7 (D-574) manufactured by Berdyansk DORMASh Factory, frontal TO-6 (D-561) made by Orlov Loader Factory, rock-loading mine machine MPR-6, and loader-transporter BD-8M equipped with experimental automatic control systems. The machines have been tested in industrial trials with loading of non-ore materials in quarries, granular and lumpy material at railroad stations, and with the loading of rock masses of different particle sizes in underground mines and quarries. The results of the study are being used in the design of Soviet automated loading and transporting machines at the Institute of Mining Machine Desing and Development; they can provide a basis for developing a family of front-end loaders and power shovels with a bucket-type loading unit. Institute of Mining, Siberian Branch of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Novosibirsk. Translated from Fiziko-Tekhnicheskie Problemy Razrabotki Poleznykh Iskopaemykh, No. 4, pp. 79–86, July–August, 1986.