Need input-- using conveyor system to move material on reclaim jobs

Hopefully this is the right place to post. We do a lot of reclaim work, old coal pits that were stripped back in the 40's through the 60's or later. We generally do the larger jobs, 500,000 yards and up. The owner and I were kicking ideas around and he mentioned a conveyor system to move it from the various piles over the high wall into the pit. It would take various lengths depending on how it was stripped. He figures longest run 600'. Currently we use scrapers and dozers depending on length of push etc. It's primarily clay, shale or similar. My question is this, what do you start the entire process with? I assume you'd need a grizzly bar setup of some sort to knock the material down to the desired size for whatever conveyor setup you chose and to keep trash out of it etc. If not that some sort of a crusher or mixer like machine? Forgive my explanations, I know very little about this sort of operation. I'm sure there would be some excavating here and there to set the operation up but I can see where this might save some time and cut down on machinery size.

Give me thoughts on sizes of conveyors, pros and cons of them, screening process from cut to conveyor, I assume we will need several generators, wiring etc. I am by no means hell bent on the idea so any feedback, good or bad, is welcome. I can see this working me hard keeping up with bearings, belting, wiring etc etc.

Thanks in advance for you help!

Junkyard

I would suggest an excavator with a screener/crusher bucket like a REMU, ALLU, MB, etc. for loading the belt hopper, handle the material once, and you don't need a separate screen or whatever with it's need for attention and movement. Just a thought.

My limited experience with belt conveyors, if they're in decent shape at all, and you don't dump hard chunks onto them that can lodge somewhere and cut the belts, they'll run thousands of hours with no more than adequate greasing (if they're not sealed). The ones I worked on were usually moving sand and they just ran with no trouble.

Yair . . .

Without exception the conveyer systems I know of are handling high value product and I would be surprised if it would be viable at just six hundred feet . . . you still have to get the material to it and away from it.

Proper techniques with slot dozing or, in some cases, the installation of a Sauerman drag system would be hard to beat.

Reclamation of coal from stockpiles is done locally by a fleet of D11's and I believe one of the main applications for the large Komatsu dozers is coalmine reclamation . . . both large volume on going projects.

Cheers.

Thanks guys. I've been pondering ways to do this. Boss and I kicked it around a little today. I'm not sure how economical it would be. Are there formulas for how much a certain size conveyor will move in a given time? Trying to wrap my brain around it, always up for learning something new!

Junkyard

How fast are you looking to move material? You can easily find a conveying system that will move 500-1000 ton per hour of material.

Interesting thread, I have just purchased a "miniveyor system" still waiting for it to turn up on a boat somewhere between England and the Pacific! After a lot of thought and advice on contracting the common theme is 1 you need customers! 2 you need "point of difference!" ... So I am being really different and sold my Cat 311 and Dozer and bought the Avant 520, Terex PT 30, have a Kubota kx in the pipe line plus Isuzu truck.

The miniveyor system is all aluminium and 3 meter long units. Target is swimming pools, demolition, walls, hard/impossible site access. A really cool way to move material efficiently and being hard to find guys to use wheel barrows a real labour saver.

There are some sites on you tube (what isn't on there)

Not moving the amount of material mentioned above but an under rated method to move material when everyone is thinking Yellow Iron!

I will post pics when we get going over here.

We don't really have a target for production other than something similar to our D11 and a 4WD with two 19 yard pans. Looking for efficiency in dirt movement as well as moving from job to job. It's not terrible around here to move the 11, probably about the same setup and tear down time between it and a conveyor system but that old girl likes her fuel. We envision a nice steady ****** of material over the high wall all day vs a blade full every 5-10 minutes depending on length of push. I'm going to time it today on this particular job and see if I can estimate production. They always say 5,000 yards a day but I think that's using the SWAG method. I think with some careful planning it would work well, on shorter pushes we may be able to set two up. Also I had another thought, is there a way to basically use a stacking conveyor but instead of pivoting where it delivers the material can we have it pivot where we load so we can reach as much material before we move the system along the cut? Does that make sense? I can see a couple of our excavators feeding the conveyor and a little dozer keeping things tidy. My gut says it would work but how steep and expensive will the learning curve be?!?

Thanks again guys!

Junkyard

Coastiebro said:

Interesting thread, I have just purchased a "miniveyor system" still waiting for it to turn up on a boat somewhere between England and the Pacific! After a lot of thought and advice on contracting the common theme is 1 you need customers! 2 you need "point of difference!" ... So I am being really different and sold my Cat 311 and Dozer and bought the Avant 520, Terex PT 30, have a Kubota kx in the pipe line plus Isuzu truck.

The miniveyor system is all aluminium and 3 meter long units. Target is swimming pools, demolition, walls, hard/impossible site access. A really cool way to move material efficiently and being hard to find guys to use wheel barrows a real labour saver.

There are some sites on you tube (what isn't on there)

Not moving the amount of material mentioned above but an under rated method to move material when everyone is thinking Yellow Iron!

I will post pics when we get going over here.

Click to expand...

Don't forget to include a little Morooka/Yanmar/IHI/Canycom track dumper they're not much bigger than a wheelbarrow and can move a lot of material quickly.

Junkyard said:

We don't really have a target for production other than something similar to our D11 and a 4WD with two 19 yard pans. Looking for efficiency in dirt movement as well as moving from job to job. It's not terrible around here to move the 11, probably about the same setup and tear down time between it and a conveyor system but that old girl likes her fuel. We envision a nice steady ****** of material over the high wall all day vs a blade full every 5-10 minutes depending on length of push. I'm going to time it today on this particular job and see if I can estimate production. They always say 5,000 yards a day but I think that's using the SWAG method. I think with some careful planning it would work well, on shorter pushes we may be able to set two up. Also I had another thought, is there a way to basically use a stacking conveyor but instead of pivoting where it delivers the material can we have it pivot where we load so we can reach as much material before we move the system along the cut? Does that make sense? I can see a couple of our excavators feeding the conveyor and a little dozer keeping things tidy. My gut says it would work but how steep and expensive will the learning curve be?!?

Thanks again guys!

Junkyard

Click to expand...

Or one excavator and a medium to largish dozer pushing the cut up to a pile. Then add a hundred foot section of conveyor and go again?

Junkyard said:

We don't really have a target for production other than something similar to our D11 and a 4WD with two 19 yard pans. Looking for efficiency in dirt movement as well as moving from job to job. It's not terrible around here to move the 11, probably about the same setup and tear down time between it and a conveyor system but that old girl likes her fuel. We envision a nice steady ****** of material over the high wall all day vs a blade full every 5-10 minutes depending on length of push. I'm going to time it today on this particular job and see if I can estimate production. They always say 5,000 yards a day but I think that's using the SWAG method. I think with some careful planning it would work well, on shorter pushes we may be able to set two up. Also I had another thought, is there a way to basically use a stacking conveyor but instead of pivoting where it delivers the material can we have it pivot where we load so we can reach as much material before we move the system along the cut? Does that make sense? I can see a couple of our excavators feeding the conveyor and a little dozer keeping things tidy. My gut says it would work but how steep and expensive will the learning curve be?!?

Thanks again guys!

Junkyard

Click to expand...

Not sure what your price range is but for a completely portable operation capable of moving material 600', buying new could be upwards of $1,000,000. With that being said you will save on fuel and also labor, and most likely cut down your down times. Also the moves wouldn't take much longer then trailering your equipment.

With the boss you never know. I've resurected some tired old crap which concerns me, a truck may show up with a bunch of wore out conveyor and he'd say there ya go! Can we use it by Monday?!? I had thought along the lines of what lantraxco said. Funny thing about him is we will cuss and discuss all kinds of ideas for months. Nothing will be said for months and then all of the sudden we've got whatever it was we talked about. Headed to tx next week to check out a D10N that's dirt cheap. Never know!

Junkyard

When the Atlanta airport expanded a runway, contractors used a 5.5 mile long conveyor belt to transport the fill material from the borrow pit to the runway.

Quite an undertaking - http://cwmatthews.com/projects/fifth-runway-embankment-project

Conveyor's are female work great for a while then all goes to hell. They have to be level from side to side or you will never keep the belts straight .You will need some sort of scalping/screening feeder you have to have a smooth even feed they do have dozer trap feeders that you just push into with dozer never been around one though. You would want a couple of conveyors in a zig zag pattern that way you can lengthen or shorten system by changing the angles . A conveyor is the cheapest way to move material if you can feed it .

Keep up the input guys!! Each post is another piece of the puzzle. The job we are on now would have been perfect once the timber was cleared. Nice long pit, almost dead straight high wall too. Getting a good level path for each conveyor would have been kinda fun with all the random piles but hey that's what we do right? Make little piles out of big ones! The other potential benefit I see is after even a light rain this material is slicker than snot on a door knob. I would think if you were loading mass ex style you could resume work a lot quicker or possibly even work through the showers. A day here, a day there pretty soon you're done a few weeks quicker. In our area it's fairly easy to find a decent hand to load with a hoe but a good dozer hand that doesn't mind the D11 is a little tougher to find. She's got personality and doesn't get along with just anybody. You have to whisper sweet nothings in her ear.....if you get angry with her vengeance is most definitely hers! Kind of ex wives! Haha.

Junkayrd

http://superior-ind.com/ Take a look around there website for ideas a quick call might get you on the right path of what you need to look for

Keep in mind depending on the material you can only get so much angle if you need to go up and over an obstacle. If you elevate the head end too much the material tends to roll back downhill. Also when it's raining and material gets wet you need to have not only a good scraper properly adjusted on the bottom of the head pulley of each belt, you probably also need a wing pulley to help get the sticky material off the belt. YMMV

I'm no expert but I wouldn't use a dozer trap for what you want to achieve, but a hopper with a feeder would be a good idea to even out flow.

We helped set up a stripping op to reclaim a large property full of overburden. They have a huge stationary jaw feeding a multi deck screen. 6 or 8 different products. From there on super-stackers out to piles . Runs vary in length 125 is longest stretch on a single conveyor.
I think you could accomplish the same with portable equipment such as a track mounted jaw or HSI . Everyone makes screens for about everything. I am particular to KPI/JCI and Aztec screens. A big cat portable power unit supported this stationary unit till the power company piped in the electricity. It was handling 800 amps @ 240v with some 480 mixed in that was at start up. I think it ran at 250A continuous. Fuel consumption was brutal. Iirc, it was eating 12-14 gallons/hr. Big 12 cylinder at full song, full load. I couldn't believe how much it ate. Still less than scrapers, dozers, operators.

It's funny this came up again. My old boss was at my yard getting some parts he's got stored. Mentioned bidding another big reclaim, 1.6M yards or thereabouts. He was kicking that idea around again. It would work great on certain jobs but I have a feeling it would keep a wrench on his toes! He's tried a couple times to talk me into coming back but where I'm at now is just too darn good. It would be cool to see that steady stream of material running over the high wall. I'm sure there are some formulas somewhere that would tell us how much we could move per hour etc. Might be fun to figure up what a given size would do.