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By M. C. Dow

INTRODUCTION BELT conveyors generally are conceded to be the most economical method yet devised for the transportation of large quantities of bulk materials within plants. Belts are coming into greater use for transportation over long distances and are replacing other forms of long-haul conveyance. It is not the intent of the writer to comment on the design of belt conveyors, but to offer some suggestions for improvement in the operation of conveying belts, based on many years experience with belts in several stonecrushing plants. It is the contention of this writer that opportunities for improvement not fully realized by most operators exist in many plants and that a study of the individual conveyors can result in lower unit belt costs. GENERAL RELIABILITY It is the fool-proof nature and general reliability of the belt conveyor that is responsible for its neglect. Even when abused, a belt will carry large tonnages and last a long time, often outlasting the personnel responsible for its care. Some operators look upon the purchase of a new belt as an expensive outlay every so many years, rather than a constant and steady cost amounting in belt wear alone to several dollars every operating day. This belt wear for all conveyors in one stone-crushing plant known by the writer costs 1 1/2 cents per ton or $12 to $15 per hour, based on the present cost of belt replacements. The fact that these replacement costs are double those of prewar quality emphasizes the necessity of improving the conditions that make belts wear out. Some of those conditions are the responsibility of the conveyor designer, and if a serious original error has been made, this handicap cannot be overcome by the operator. If the belt is too narrow, too steep, or too fast for good loading, the operator finds that he has an inherently expensive belt. The other factors that decrease the life of a belt are more or less under his control. The two factors of most importance are the loading conditions and the alignment. Most of the cover wear and carcass cutting occurs at the loading point and if the alignment is not good under all conditions, edge wear or damage may result, Fig I. LOADING THE BELT It is difficult to load a belt in an ideal manner; that is, to flow the material on the moving belt at a steady rate, without impact, without turbulence, and with a velocity equal to and in the same direction as the belt. An inclined belt is especially difficult to load and particularly when its speed is over 300 or 350 fpm. Inclined conveyors require longer skirt plates to prevent spillage until the load settles. It does not seem reasonable to expect an inclined conveyor to carry the same load as a horizontal belt of the same width and speed, because of the difficulty in loading

Jan 1, 1947

ALL that I have been able to tell you concerning the ordinary practice of parting with aqua fords I have striven to demonstrate to you as briefly as possible. Now, before passing on to speak of other things, I wish to teach you the method that you must follow in order to recover whatever is good in those chalky precipitates of that acid and all the silver that you put in; it was for this reason that I told you to save them in a cucurbit by themselves. This is called "water of whites" by the master parters, and in reality is nothing other than the precipitates of thick phlegm of aqua fords, white as chalk. If these were not extracted from the acid, the spirits of the infused materials [69] would be almost without

Jan 1, 1942

By George W. Riter

Discussion of the paper of H. 0. Hofman and C. R. Hayward, presented at the New Haven Meeting, February, 1909, and printed in Bulletin No. 30, June, 1909, pp. 513 to 529. GEORGE W. RITER, Salt Lake City, Utah (communication to the Secretary*).-In their paper, Messrs. Hofman and Hayward deal with a branch of silver metallurgy that is on very uncertain ground, both as a commercial process and as a metallurgical science; moreover, its field is limited to few localities and to peculiar conditions. The literature on the subject is incomplete and full of conflicts. The paper under discussion clears u p no disputed points; on the contrary, because of hasty generalization, its tendency is towards further confusion. In Table I., the authors assume that each test-lot of 1,800 g. of ore contained exactly 5.499 g. of silver, that any variation in the quantity of silver recovered, however slight, should be ascribed to variation in the time of grinding. It is barely possible that the ore was mixed so uniformly as to justify this assumption; but those of us who know how difficult it is to get uniform samples of any ore in which silver mineral is present in rich particles will have a doubt on this point. The unlikelihood of getting absolutely uniform test-lots of ore also reflects on the data in Table II., on the effect of varying the amount of salt in a pan-charge. The authors say " The salt series was the last one that was investigated." This again raises a question as to whether the ore was split into test-lots at the time of sampling, or whether it was kept in bulk in such a way as to permit mechanical concentration of values before the end of the experiments. The conclusion following Table II.: " There is no reason, therefore, for going beyond six per cent. of salt," is hardly to the point. If we assume that salt is of benefit only when in solution, it follows that the relation between the quantity of salt

Mar 1, 1910

By H. W. Fleming, R. R. Brooks

The Clearwater Deposit, a small occurrence of massive-sulphide mineralization enclosed in an envelope of disseminated-sulphide mineralization, was discovered as a result of an aeroelectromagnetic survey in New Brunswick in 1955. Subsequently, additional flights were made over the deposit and various ground follow-up methods were employed to ascertain the nature of their response. All methods proved to be capable of indicating the occurrence with varying degrees of precision. This paper is a presentation and a discussion of the magnetic and electromagnetic data, both airborne and ground, and the self-potential data obtained over this deposit. The attention of Canadian mining exploration companies was initially focussed on New Brunswick by the discovery, in 1953, of the Brunswick ore body. Ground electromagnetic surveys were of considerable assistance in locating and developing this deposit. In the following year, 1954, the Heath Steele base-metal deposits were discovered by employing an airborne electromagnetic device and ground electromagnetic surveys to follow-up the airborne indications. These discoveries demonstrated clearly that both airborne and ground electromagnetic techniques were applicable for locating the near-surface deposits of massive sulphides present in this region. Airborne electromagnetic equipment became available on a contract basis through Aeromagnetic Surveys Limited early in 1955 and was used extensively thereafter throughout a large portion of northern New Brunswick. It was as a result of one of these surveys with Aeromagnetic Surveys Limited equipment in the summer of 1955 that the Clearwater Deposit was detected. The airborne anomaly was located on the ground by means of an electromagnetic survey using a Swedish Slingram unit. During 1956, the region was investigated more thoroughly- in the hope that other sulphide bodies might be located. Airborne electromagnetic coverage was extended and the Clearwater Deposit itself was used as a testing ground for the various methods and types of equipment currently in use in New Brunswick. In this paper com prative data are presented for the airborne magnetic, airborne electromagnetic, ground magnetic and ground electromagnetic surveys over this deposit. The ground electromagnetic instruments used were the McPhar vertical-loop unit and the Slingram and Boliden horizontal-loop units. Self-potential surveys were carried out with a McPhar unit. From the geophysical point of view, all ground electrical methods employed indicated the presence and the extent of the massive-sulphide mineralization with a good degree of accuracy. The horizontal-loop methods however, defined the contacts more precisely as is to be expected when dealing with a flatly-dipping

Jan 1, 1961

By M. TAYLOR

AT Grand Saline, some 65 miles east of Dallas, the Morton Salt Co. of Chicago has for some years operated a brine pumping and evaporation plant on a salt dome. They recently drilled trial holes to obtain data on the dome, preparatory to opening, a new mine, with the following results: The dome is in the form of a truncated cone, with an average of 210 ft. of cover. The top of the dome is approximately one mile in diameter, with the town of Grand Saline lying over the northern rim, and the sides slope off at an angle of 50" to 80" from the horizontal. The deepest holes were drilled to 900 ft. without penetrating beyond the salt, and indications are that the salt deposit is several thousand feet thick. As the deposit increases in area with the depth, there is undoubtedly enough salt to supply a mining operation for an almost unlimited period of years.

Jan 1, 1930

By E. C. Lee

THE safety of mine workers has received more attention from both State and Federal law-making bodies than any other industry, a fact that shows clearly the hazardous nature of the industry. The last, but by no means the least, of the measures adopted for the protection of mine workers, is workmen's compensation legislation. This is proving to be a powerful instrument for greater safety in the industries, from the fact that special stress is laid not on how the accident happened or who may have been responsible for it, but on how badly the employee is hurt by it. The injured person does not have to employ lawyers to prove his case, because the mere fact of his employment is proof of his right to compensation. The immediate effect of such legislation is the certainty confronting the mine operator that he must pay out large sums for every accident, regardless of its cause, thus adding materially to the cost of the production of his coal. This fact furnished to the operator the strongest incentive to reduce the causes of accidents; not that the operator has ever lacked reasonable consideration for the welfare of his employees and a proper humane interest in their safety, but his engrossment in earning his daily livelihood has been so great that he has not felt that he had the time to devote to the safety of the operation. This time he must now find because of the actual-cash value of the prevention of accidents in his mines. This agency alone proved inadequate to bring about a material improvement because operators have always been willing enough to improve safety conditions when possible to do so within reasonable limits of their financial ability. The requirement in the Workmen's Compensation Laws of several of the States, that the mine operator shall insure as a guarantee of his ability to meet his compensation obligations, has furnished the needed incentive, moral and financial, necessary to the prompt and effective dissemination of a more general knowledge of the causes and

Jan 10, 1917

By C. C. Harris, A. Jowett, S. K. Ghosh

An equation derived from first-order kinetics and accounting for return from froth to pulp has correlated continuous flotation data. The concentration of floatable material in the pulp can be altered either by changing the feed concentration or the feed rate. The latter does not affect the flotation rate constant, the froth to pulp return constant, and the concentration of non-floatable material in both the pulp and concentrate. Both the return constant and the concentration of non-floatable material in the pulp are directly proportional to the feed concentration, while the concentration of non-floatable material in the concentrate is related to the feed concentration. The investigation of the froth flotation process by continuous test methods, previously used by Brown and smith,1 Jowett and Safvi2 and Jowett and West,3 is being continued. Recent tests, primarily concerned with flotation cell design, have yielded kinetic data suitable for testing an equation proposed by Arbiter and Harris4 which postulates that a flotation process is defined by two rate constants: 1) the rate constant for mass transfer from pulp to froth. Previous workers have regarded this as the flotation rate constant. 2) the rate constant for mass transfer from froth to pulp, which has previously been ignored. THEORY Under continuous flow conditions at the steady state in Fig. 1 the equation developed4 is Symbols are defined in Table I. The air-liquid ratio terms4 have been omitted, since they are substantially constant for a given set of conditions. Also, for a system operating at the steady state Vf and V, remain constant and Eq. 1 can be written: Cp/Cc=b'/a,+Qc/a' [2]

Jan 1, 1963

By Everett D. Jackson

The largest deposits of chromite in the United States occur in tabular layers in the lower part of the Stillwater Complex, Montana. Nearly 900,000 long tons of chromite concentrates have been produced from mines and mills in this area, and reserves equivalent to more than 2,500,000 long tons of Cr2O3 remain in the ground. Layered concentrations of chromite (known as chromitite zones) occur only within olivine-rich layers of the Peridotite member of the Ultramafic zone of the Stillwater. As many as thirteen chromitite zones, lying conformably one above another, have been found, but only five of them are thick enough to be of any conceivable economic interest, and only two of them have been mined to date. Individual chromitite zones can be recognized by their distinctive internal character and by their stratigraphic position in the Peridotite member. The chemical composition of chromite varies consistently between and within the different chromitite zones. The zones range in thickness from about an inch to more than 12 feet, and the Cr2O3, content of their chromite ranges from 36.6 to 49.2 weight per cent. In any given area, the G chromitite zone is the thickest, but the chromite of the H chromitite zone has the highest grade. Laterally, the thickness of the chromitite zones is related to the thickness of the Peridotite member; in general all are thicker in the eastern part of the Stillwater than in the western part.

Jan 1, 1968

By R. E. Zimmerman

Wide attention is being placed upon various methods for cleaning the fine sizes of bituminous coals. The author describes and analyzes the results achieved on wet concentrating .tables of modern design on unclassified feeds of - 1/2 in. particle sizes, including tests on high-sulphur coals.

Jan 1, 1950

By D. K. Deardorff, H. Kato

THE transformation temperature of hafnium from hcp to bcc is 1750° + 20 °C in contrast to previously published values by Duwez and fast2 which are believed inaccurate. The Bureau of Mines determined this value by measuring the temperatures at which a sudden decrease was observed in the electrical resistance of hafnium alloys containing up to 18 at. pct Zr, and then extrapolating the temperatures to 0 pct Zr. Duwez1 previously reported a transformation temperature of 1310°C, obtained by use of a rapid-cooling thermal-analysis technique. Later, Fast2 published a much higher value of 1950° 100°C based upon: a) his own determination of 1690°C for the beginning of the transformation range for hafnium containing 5.7 at. pct Zr, and b) his belief that lattice parameters reported3 for Duwez' hafnium indicated i contained 19 at. pct Zr and that the 1310°C value should be associated with that composition. Russell4 subsequently stated that Duwez and Fast probably were reporting their lattice parameters in different units and reassigned a value of 6.0 at. pct Zr to Duwez' hafnium. If this assumption were true, Duwez' hafnium was of approximately the same purity as Fast's, but his transformation value was considerably lower. The reason for this divergence is not known. Fast's value for hafnium containing 5.7 at. pct Zr agrees well with our data. McGeary5 determined a transformation value of 1660°C by metallographic examination of heat-treated specimens, but the zirconium content of his hafnium was not definitely established. The specimens used in this investigation were 1/8-in.-diam rods 6 1/2 in. long, fabricated by hot-swaging bars cut from arc-melted buttons. These buttons were melted from crystal bar hafnium and crystal bar zirconium. The chief impurity in the hafnium

Jan 1, 1960

By H. M. Howe

THIS paper presents an experimental verification of some of the predictions made by one of us' concerning 'the influence of certain conditions of casting upon the size and position of the pipe', and the position of the segregate, in steel ingots. The predictions which we have been able to verify are the following A. That the pipe is shortened and the segregate raised 1. By slow casting; 2. By casting with the large end up instead of down; 3. By retarding the cooling of the top, e.g., by means of a sinking-head. B. That the pipe is shortened by slow cooling. C. That the pipe and segregate lie in the last freezing-part. Our procedure was to cast ingots of wax (commercially pure stearic acid) containing a little bright green copper oleate (usually 1.5 per cent.) under varying conditions; to saw each ingot open along a longitudinal plane passing through its axis ; and to examine the longitudinal section thus laid bare. In order to make the segregate or enriched part more distinct in color from the impoverished part, a very little red cerasine was added. An experiment which will be described later showed that the cerasine itself does not segregate markedly, if at all. Hence we may assume that the strong contrasts between the green and red shown in so many of our ingots are due, not to segregation of cerasine, but to that of the green oleate, in the wax which in itself is uniformly reddened with cerasine.

Jul 1, 1907

By COREY C. BRAYTON

OUR first air travel began at Barranquilla on a trip to the platinum dredging-operations at Andagoya. The fare is based on a minimum weight of passenger, and I will have to admit that the minimum is too low. To make this trip by boat would have necessitated going back to the Canal, thence down to Buena Ventura, and up the San Juan river, which would have taken, counting delays, two or three weeks. The time by Scadta airplane was six hours. We stopped at Cartagena for a day to look over that historic city. The route from there lay along the north coast to the mouth of the Atrato river, then up this river, over the jungle, and over a divide some 300'ft. in elevation and down the San Juan river a few miles to Andagoya at the junction of the Condoto. The General

Jan 1, 1930

By F. W. Bradley

MY first Nevada City mining reminiscence is one of seeing Capt. Thomas Mein, over 52 years ago, in the old Wyoming mill on Deer Creek about a mile below the town of Nevada City. Captain Mein was then superintendent of the Wyoming mine, where the old fashioned Cornish pump was used, as well as hurdy-gurdy water wheels for power. This mill was one of the typical, up-to-date mills of that time and consisted of stamps, fed by Chinese hand feeders, who also cobbed the ore down to a small enough size to be fed into the mortars. Stamps at that time were of light weight and crushed about one ton to one and a half tons to the stamp, the pulp going over plates, then into sluices with self-raising gates. When a sluice became full the pulp was shut off and directed into the parallel sluice, also with a self-raising gate. The concentrate thus collected in the sluice was shoveled out and carried to Cornish buddles and there cleaned up, preparatory to being sent to a local custom chlorination works.

Jan 1, 1929

By John V. Beall

During the last quarter of 1948, two new machines, which may revolutionize the coal mining industry, made their first public appearance within two months of each other. Both are designed to mine and load coal continuously. On Oct. 27, the "Colmol," invented by C. H. Snyder and A. E. Lamm, president and executive vice-president, respectively, of the Sunnyhill Coal Co., was demonstrated at the No. 8 mine of that Company at New Lexington, Ohio. The "Joy Continuous Miner," invented by H. F. Silver, president of the Silver Engineering Works, Denver, and developed and manufactured by the Joy Manufacturing Co., was demonstrated at the Mathies mine, near Finleyville, Pa., in the Pittsburgh coal seam.

Jan 1, 1949

By J. Fred, Johnson

THIS TALK is a digest of some of the information contained in tables, one on practices and one on costs of shaft sinking, in Bulletin 357 of the U. S. Bureau of Mines written by E. D. Gardner, Supervising Engineer of the Bureau at Tucson, and myself. The table of practices contains information on 43 shafts and the table of costs contains information on 25 shafts. These various shafts were sunk between 1917 and 1930 so they may be termed modern practice with costs applicable in the United States, Canada and Mexico. In the compilation of this material the statistics on shafts which were concreted have been eliminated, as these figures were entirely out of line with corresponding figures for timbered shafts. It is my experience that where costs are divided between sinking and concreting the tendency is to load the costs onto the larger item of concreting. Thus a shifting of costs making an addition of 10 per cent in concreting costs may suffice to make a deduction of 40 per cent in sinking costs. Fine work is done (on the books) and everybody is happy. Most shafts are sunk with three shifts of men per day. Each shift consists of men who are miners, muckers, or timbermen, as chance may call for during their shift. Where pumping or high fixed costs do not necessitate three shifts it is cheaper to sink on two shifts. It is desirable for speed and economy in any case to work out a cycle of operations for each 24 hours. In this way men are hired for their ability as machinemen, muckers, or timbermen; they know exactly what to do and there is no passing the buck to the next shift.

Jan 1, 1933

"The mines of Butte, in addition to the square timber used, consume each year large quantities of round timber, which are called stulls. The Stull business is an important industry, as will be seen from a brief description of the operations of the Mines Timber Co., which institution furnishes most of the stulls and lagging poles used in the Butte mines.Timber produced by the Mines' Timber Co. is mostly cut on the government forest reserve, on California gulch, American gulch and French gulch. To bring the timber to market, a flume 16 miles long has been constructed from Big American gulch to Mill creek. The flume, which heads on Big American gulch, on the Atlantic slope, crosses the Continental Divide at an elevation of 6,525 ft., and delivers timber at Mill creek on the Butte, Anaconda & Pacific railway, which is on the Pacific slope. Timber is loaded on cars at Mill creek and shipped to the Butte mines, a distance of twenty-six miles. There are 29 trestles on the flume line over 25 ft. high. The highest trestle is 78 ft. and the longest is 775 ft. The longest tunnel on the line of the flume is 565 ft. from portal to portal."

Jan 1, 1913

By C. M. WEILD

ATTENTION has been turned recently to the exploration and development of certain large blanket-deposits of brown iron-ore in Cuba. The most conspicuous of these to-day, and the one upon which the most light has been shed, is the Mayari deposit, situated about 15 miles south of Nipe bay. Here the Spanish-American Co. has sole control over 18,500 acres of ore-bearing lands, reported by its engineers to contain 500,000,000 tons of ore; and the necessary plant and equipment, with docks and railways, is now under construction for the early marketing of this ore. A similar deposit, and undoubtedly the next to be exploited, is the ore-field at Moa bay, where 13,000 to 15,000 acres of ore-lands, immediately adjacent to the shores of an excellent harbor, have been generously covered by numerous mining-claims, practically all controlled by four large interests. This deposit is now estimated to contain approximately 350,000,000 tons, on the basis of dried ore ready for shipment, a figure which may be increased when the western limits of the ore-deposit have been more accurately defined. Other deposits of the same type, but smaller and less accessible, are those at Cubitas, situated from 12 to 15 miles north of Camaguey city, and at Taco bay and Navas, points lying a few miles west of Baracoa. The area of the Cubitas deposit is said to be 6,000 acres, and the yield of ore is estimated at 150,000,000 tons. The Baracoa. deposits are less well known, but preliminary estimates have placed their joint ore-reserves at 40,000,000 tons. Accepting the above tonnages as reasonably correct, we conclude that the deposits enumerated give promise of adding about 1,000,000,000 tons of iron-ore to the world's supply; they have, therefore, to be considered in any attempt to fore-

Aug 1, 1909

By George S. Rice

GROUND movement from mining, whether it be for coal, metal, industrial minerals, or .oil, will always present many difficult problems. These are especially serious when valuable surface improvements may be badly damaged. The mine itself, if mining methods are not suitable to the formation, is subject to heavy falls of the main roof in the working places; and with certain structural conditions the movements may cause in coal mines disastrous bumps and outbursts of gas, and in deep metal mines rock bursts. In open-cut work rock and earth slides may result. Absolute prevention of ground movement from mining is impossible unless large pillars are left unmined,

Jan 1, 1937

By James V. Thompson

ENGINEERS from industrialized countries are frequently called upon to examine mining operations in primitive areas and make recommendations regarding mechanization and modernization. They often set forth with self-confidence, knowing full well that all that is needed is their experience and several shiploads of mining machinery, and at times they mentally provide the answers before the problems have been clearly stated. In primitive areas it is absolutely essential that the examining engineer spend enough time at the site to acquire a thorough understanding of what is being done now and why it is done the way it is. The objective here is to state in simple terms some of the problems that may be encountered, in- as much as solutions, if they can be found at all, will differ with each experience.

Jan 8, 1958

By Clamer, G. H.

G. H. CLAMER, * PHILADELPHIA, PA.-Unfortunately, prior to the war no serious attention was given to the conservation of tin, notwithstanding that this country is practically dependent upon outside sources for its entire tin supply. Tin is of vital importance in many industries, but it is surprising how many and how excellent are its substitutes when we become acquainted with them. Tin has always been a relatively high-priced metal, and it is part of the human attitude to associate high prices with high standards; it is not until the price of a commodity becomes well-nigh prohibitive that we hunt for substitutes, because the idea of substitution seems always to involve an assumption that the substitute must necessarily be inferior. The history of the development of bearing bronzes is a striking example of this policy. In the early clays, copper-tin alloys were almost universally used, the idea then being prevalent, which is still held by many, that a bearing to resist wear must be hard, and the harder the better. The favorite bronze bearing contained 90 per cent. copper and 10 per cent. tin; frequently, in service which was considered severe, even higher proportions of tin were used.. Such hard alloys have great resistance to compression, but as a rule they had a very wide factor of safety in this

Jan 12, 1918