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Beating The Squeeze
Newscene Article, Oct 2010
A new generation dinter-cutter-loader is helping to transform face heading conditions at West Yorkshire’s Kellingley Colliery.
The big squeeze on Kellingley’s 501s, requires major surgery in the loader gate with dinting and retrospective side and roof bolting to create enough space to enable heavy duty equipment to be advanced as the face retreats back.
The new compact hydraulically-driven system is doing the business some 30 to 40 metres outbye of the face, which, with 1,000m still to retreat should, as conditions improve, be producing up to 60,000 tonnes sa week from a 2.6m thick section in the Beeston seam. Says mechanical engineer Ian Dixon: “We’re convinced that the answer lies in this new method of dinting.”
To keep up with face retreat, which is about 13m a day, and create a route for equipment, such as the stage loader, would normally take two men per shift working on the blind side of the belt but can be done by this machine, operated by one man.
Installed on the ribside of the belt, the metre-wide multi-purpose machine, The machine’s cutting arm can reach up to 4.3m and using a powerful 475mm diameter scroll with 64 cutting picks, combined with a 0.315 cubic metre loading bucket and a jigger pick that can tackle strata over 100 mega-pascals in strength, the DCL is advancing up to three metres a shift. And that’s taking up to a 1.4m dint in what was originally a 5.5m by 3.6m gate.
Adds Ian Dixon : “This method of dinting is making a big difference to Kellingley. It’s taken men out of an area of work which is heavy going and awkward.”
