Cutting Machines

Introduction
There have been several different types of cutting machine developed over the
years, but "shearers" and "ploughs" have proved to be the most successful,
especially the former and will be the only types dealt with in any detail here. Some
types, such as "trepanners" were designed to produce a larger size of coal
required for boilers, particularly for railways, and have dropped out of use as this
need disappeared.

Coal Ploughes

Coal Ploughs have had little application in Australia, and their main use has been
in Europe, particularly in Germany where they were first developed. Essentially a
plough is a large mass of steel, usually of a more or less triangular shape when
viewed from the coal face or goaf sides, fitted with large "picks" (more like small
agricultural plough blade tips) angled from the steel body towards the coal face.
The plough height is the working height in the seam being mined (possibly a bit
lower if the coal tops can be guaranteed to fall once the coal below is cut. These
"picks" act in a fashion similar to chisels and break a narrow web of coal off the
face (of the order of 300-400mm thick). In most cases there are no moving parts on
a coal plough.

The plough itself is mounted on the front of the AFC and is pushed into the face by
push cylinders mounted in the supports. The plough has an endless chain haulage
attached to the rear, and is driven through sprockets on electric drive(s) at the face
end(s).

The main advantages of ploughs compared to shearers are:

 Cheap
 Simple (no moving parts on the cutting machine itself)
 Relatively low dust make
 Able to keep exposed roof area very small (but a large number of chock
movements would be required to maintain this)

Though only a small web is taken, in the right conditions production rates can be
comparable to a shearer as the plough is operated at a relatively fast speed along
the face.

Some disadvantages are:

 Cutting height is fixed

 Ability to cut stone is limited
 With increasing cutting height, machine stability becomes more problematic
 Grading can only be done using the AFC angle
 There are safety implications with an exposed chain haulage.

Shearers
Shearers are by far the most commonly used cutting machines, both in Australia
and overseas. A shearer consists of a machine body containing electric motors,
hydraulic equipment and controls which is mounted over the AFC. Horizontal
cutting drums are mounted on the face side of the machine, laced with cutting
picks and rotating in a plane parallel to the face. If the AFC is pushed towards the
face as the cutting drums are rotated and the shearer travels along the face, it is
able to cut into the face for the full web width, moving along a snake in the AFC.
This is known as "sumping in". Once fully into the web, the shearer can advance
the full length of the face cutting out the web. The snake can also be reversed to
cut the wedge shaped portion of coal left while sumping in.
 The first shearers had a single drum rigidly attached to the body of the machine
and so had a fixed cutting height and had to be able to get the body of the
machine past the edge of the face at one end to cut the full length. Further
developments saw the cutting drum being mounted on a hydraulically operated
arm to vary the possible cutting height and a second cutting drum being fitted to
provide a drum at both ends of the machine. Such machines were originally
known as "Double Ended Ranging Drum Shearers or DERDS" but being
almost the only type of shearer now used, the term "shearer" is generally
understood to refer to this configuration.

 The double ended ranging drum arrangement also allows smaller drums to be
fitted while still cutting the required height, either cutting part of the seam with
each drum in one pass or as two separate passes. The ranging arms allow much
easier grading or changes in cutting height where required.
 Shearers are mounted onto AFC's using either steel rollers or sliders running on
the two edges of the AFC structure, either trapped or sufficiently guided by
flanges to ensure derailing will not occur. The clearance between the bottom of
the shearer body and the AFC base is an important design consideration as all
coal cut on the tailgate side of the shearer has to pass under the shearer body on
its way to the maingate. Any severe restriction at this point can cause problems,
either causing coal to build up and spill over the AFC back plate or causing the
AFC to jam. This is particularly the case where coal frequently comes off the
face as large blocks or where roof stone has fallen on the AFC. In some
instances a small coal breaker is fitted under the shearer at the low point to
prevent blockages occurring.
 Most shearers use radio control for normal operations although they are also
fitted with manual and/or pendant controls for use in emergency conditions.

 Shearer Haulage
Chain haulages have been used to drive shearers along the face, but modern units
use a rack and pinion arrangement for this purpose. Rack sections are attached on
the face side of the AFC back plates and drive pinions, usually hydraulically
driven, are attached to the goaf side of the shearer body. Stops are built into or
placed in the rack sections at each end of the face to limit shearer travel and so
prevent damage to other equipment in those locations.

Shearer Cutting Drums and ancillaries

Shearer drums are not continuous cylinders but have a small diameter central
section with scrolls or vanes from there to the full diameter, the picks being
attached to the outer edges of the scroll. The pick lacing is set to optimize cutting
for the seam being worked, while the vanes are used to move the coal efficiently
from the cutting area onto the AFC. Inefficient loading will lead to a lot of the
power applied to the drums being wasted in churning and crushing coal already cut
in the drum area. The pick design is also important to maximize efficiency in
cutting and avoid wasting power in this process.

Another device used to improve coal loading is a "cowl". This is a curved steel
plate mounted on supporting arms so that it sits behind a cutting drum to prevent
coal passing from the back of the drum into the area where the web has been cut,
the coal being forced to move sideways towards the AFC instead. The cowl is
fitted with a motor and drive pinion so that the cowl can be rotated from one side
of the drum to the other when the cutting direction is reversed.

Some shearer drums now have a hollow shaft venturi ventilation system design to
ventilate the area on the face side of the drum while cutting, thereby preventing a
possible ignition of gas given off in the cutting process.

High pressure water is directed through the drums to the picks for dust suppression
and pick cooling purposes, including water which has been used for cooling the
shearer motors. Additional sprays are also fitted on the shearer for dust control,
often acting as curtain sprays to keep dust on the face side of the shearer away
from personnel rather than actually trying to settle the dust.
Cable and Hose Handling (Bretby)

A shearer has to be supplied with electric power and water and as it is continuously
moving, trailing cables and hoses are required. Unlike a continuous miner which is
mostly only moving forward with intermittent reversals, a shearer is continuously
moving backwards and forwards along the entire face length and in a very
congested area. A means of managing and controlling the trailing cables is
therefore required, The "Bretby" (named after the location of the research and
development section of the British National Coal Board, where the device
originated) is a flexible carrier consisting of a series of flat "plates" usually of a
plastic material connected in the form of a chain but which only flexes along its
length, similar in appearance to tracks on a "caterpillar" driven machine but with a
double row of plates. With the aid of pins on the outer edges, this forms a container
which is flexible in one direction only (in a vertical plane when installed on the
face).

Fixed cables and hoses are run in a services tray attached to the back plate of the
AFC from the services supply end of the face (normally the maingate) to mid-face.
At this point the shearer trailing cables and hoses, enclosed within the Bretby, are
attached to the fixed cables and hoses, with the Bretby then being run in a cable
trough attached to the AFC back plate (above the services tray) to both ends of the
face as the shearer moves from end to end. The other end of the Bretby is attached
to an arm fixed to the goaf side of the shearer of a length to hold the end of the
Bretby directly above the cable trough and at a height such that the cable is bent at
an acceptable radius when dragged back on itself.

When the shearer is at the tailgate, the trailing cable is fully stretched from mid-
face. As the shearer travels to the maingate, the Bretby doubles back on itself to the
mid-face position and is then dragged out to full extension again when the shearer
is at the maingate. The process is reversed when going back to the tailgate.

Care is needed if the shearer is taken backwards and forwards in one area as the
Bretby will be trying to go back on itself several times. There is a height limit to
the number of times it is possible to do this, as well as a limit on the radius the
cable can be bent to.

Basic principle of cutting

Generally coal found in earth as above or below the ground surface. As a low
depth coal found called surface mining and the coal deposit above 320m from
the surface, this comes under the underground mining.

Principle method of surface mining to extract the coal from surface that
is(strip mining, contour mining,mountaintop removal).

Principle method of underground mining are longwall,Board and pillar,

continuous mining, Blast mining, Shortwall mining, Retreat mining.

Basic principle of ploughing

The plowing principle is simple: A sculpted steel plow body equipped with

strategically-placed cutting bits is pulled along the face conveyor from one end of
the face to the other by a continuous loop chain powered by drives located at the
face ends