Stanley Annular Groove Machine

[dazbt]

Origin of a species, perhaps ............

[John]

The birth of the trepanner.

[dazbt]

and the next size up;

[John]

I see it's really a road heading machine, the modern Marrietta Miner is based on the same design, though a lot more modern and robust.

[dazbt]

I must admit that I was thinking more in the line of it being an ancestor of the trepanner, the Stanley Machine was used as an 'in seam' heading machine and from what I read of it it wasn't all that successful as such, it was difficult to clear the large pieces of coal that it cored, which had to be done manually, unlike the very different concept of the Robbins and Marietta heading machines that are in fact 'scourers' rather than core cutters based on the true trepanning concept. The aspect of the syncronised rotation of the Stanley Double Annular Grooving machine cutting elements does tie in with the Marrietta, but the actual cutting concept is very different. Trepanning coal is by far the most energy efficient way of actually cutting into coal as opposed to shearing or scouring, the problems are in breaking and loading the product. Trepanner power loaders such as the AB 70hp, the AB 120 Heavy Duty Trepanner and later DECMTs were the most efficient but were considered redundant when large coal was no longer desired, small coal and dust was the prefered product for power station consumption and the pratical limitations of electrical power supply to coal cutting units were over-ridden, the less efficient Longwall Shearers were considered to be the requirement.
If I remember correctly there was a road heading machine developed in the early 1960s that seemed to incorporate all aspects of The Stanley, The Marietta, The Robbins and The AB Trepanner and for whatever reason ended up being called the Peake Header ......... obviously it never made a real mark, failing somewhere along the line ........... can anyone remember it, or explain why it failed.?

[John]

I remeber the peake ripping machine, we did some papers on it at Tech, I'm pretty sure Cotgrave had one, I may be wrong. My thoughts are it wasn't as maneuverable was a Doscoe Road Header. From recollection the Peake was developed by the NCB. ended up the same way as the stablehole machine.