Mining Equipment

  There are a variety of tools and equipment used in the mining industry. Here are some examples:

a.    Sluice Box- This piece of equipment is used for processing Gold ore. It is more effective is washing away gravel than a gold pan, but requires a large amount of water to do so.

b.    Conveyors- This system can lift and carry material more efficiently than a truck. It’s disadvantage is that is must be moved from time to time.

c.    Electric Shovels- Electric shovels are used for loading waste and ore. They are often used in large open pit operations.

d.    Bucket Wheel Excavators- The bucket wheel digs at a continuous rate and then loads the muck onto conveyor belts to be removed from the mining area.

e.    Draglines- Somewhat like an electric shovel, a dragline is a much larger piece of equipment that is used to drag material from one place to another. It has a bucket with a 60 cu. yd. capacity.

f.       Ore Trucks- Ore trucks are basically for hauling large loads of ore, usually between 50 and 250 tons. 

g.    Slurry Trucks- A slurry truck is a mobile unit use for transporting slurry. Slurry is an explosive mixture used to break up rock.

h.    Loaders- Loaders are high-capacity machines with great maneuverability. They can move at high rates of speed and can carry loads for some distance, which makes them very efficient at moving from one job to the next.

i.       Electric Drills- These drills are large and electrically powered. They can drill holes up to 12 inches is diameter with depths of 100 feet in just minutes. The drill holes are then filled with a slurry explosive and blasted to break up the rock. This makes for easier loading.

j.       Dredges- Dredges are used to dig gravel. They do this by floating in the water with an endless string of moving buckets. The fine material passes through a series of sluices, which recovers the gold. The coarse material is dumped out the back of the bucket.

k.    Hydraulic Giants- This piece of equipment is a pivotable water nozzle that attaches to the end of a large pipe. When water comes from a point higher than the nozzle, water spews from the nozzle with tremendous pressure to wash away boulders and gravel through a sluice box.

l.       Rocker Box- This piece of equipment is used for processing Gold ore when water is scarce. The gravel is washed by being rocked back and forth in the rocker. This action allows the course gravel to get caught in the screen and is periodically dumped. A rocker box has less capacity than a sluice box, but requires less water.

m.Gold Washer- This piece of equipment works by feeding the gravel into a hopper with a power shovel, dragline, scraper, or other device. It functions to remove large rocks from the sediment. It uses a large amount of water, but some operators recycle the water by dumping it into a pond and then pumping it back to the plant.