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Post by welderpaul on Aug 1, 2012 13:09:23 GMT -5
I've just been having a browse through a copy of the RJB examination and testing of mechnical equipment handbook (A bit of light reading ;D). There is reference to 'slushers'. What are these? Cannot find anything on the site...? Cheers
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Post by Wheldale on Aug 1, 2012 13:44:19 GMT -5
It's like a bucket with teeth. It's on the end of a endless winch. They are used in headings and in stopes in hard rock mining. The buck goes back and forth via a winch and cuts into the freshly cut rock. The are an old way of clearing muck.
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Post by John on Aug 1, 2012 13:53:23 GMT -5
They were used in coalmining too, prior to advanced gate headings in advancing longwall faces. First time I saw them was at Cotgrave Colliery in 1968, don't recall how many faces used them but all of the five faces had "sumping shearers" to eliminate stable holes in the tailgates. Ripping lip was "dropped" and a slusher was used to bring the rippings out to the ripping team who were building the gateside packs.
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Post by welderpaul on Aug 1, 2012 14:03:56 GMT -5
Cheers lads....and a ripping lip....?
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Post by John on Aug 1, 2012 14:10:21 GMT -5
On low seams the road, "gate" meets up with the face, the road is maintained, well should be, at say 8 feet high by 10 feet wide semi circular...as an example, the top section over the face is rock, which is called the ripping lip, and to advance the road it is drilled and charged with explosives, fired down and the rock used as packs either side of the road to help support the strata, then semi circular RSJ's are set in place, two sections in tail gates, fish plated and bolted together at the top to form the road. I'll scan an old NCB book to illustrate it better later.
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Post by John on Aug 1, 2012 14:17:38 GMT -5
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Post by Wheldale on Aug 1, 2012 16:22:32 GMT -5
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Post by shropshirebloke on Aug 1, 2012 16:44:21 GMT -5
In Shropshire it was just called the rip.
Back to slushers - they were also used for dinting (increasing the cross-section of roadways by ripping out heaved floor). I once had the pleasure of driving an ancient main and tail rope haulage (my pit only used endless and direct haulages for supply work) slushing an old return airway to improve the airflow for a new face. Trouble was the haulage was outbye of the road being dinted, so after a few seconds of starting the bucket moving, inbye or outbye, I was enveloped in a cloud of choking dust. Still, I soon learnt to operate it by touch and sound, but I wasn't sorry to move on to other work after a couple of weeks!
I also remember 'slusher belts' - a crude version of the old bottom-loading face conveyors. The one I worked on was in a tailgate where the face was being moved foward to a new line to try and pass a 'washout' (where an ancient coal forest stream had meandered through what was later to become the coal seam, leaving much of the face with sandstone instead of coal).
While the new face line was being driven and the tailgate driven inbye, a temporary conveyor was used - old narrow (18" - 24") knackered belting, with the load-carrying part running along the floor on the dirt and the return web occasionally supported by bars and other junk slung from the rings. Apart from the gearhead and the boxend there wasn't a single roller in a few hundred yards.
The final stretch through the airdoors out to the main road conveyor was basically a very long, but narrow, stageloader ('Crawley' round our way when connecting an AFC or 'Panzer' with a gate conveyor), or 'snig' as I remember it being called.
Anyone else remember words that were only used in the pit: Puffler, Crut, Dan, Snap, Warwick Girder, Tadger, Sylvester...I can remember dozens, and I only worked there for a couple of years over thirty years ago...
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Post by John on Aug 1, 2012 17:10:44 GMT -5
In Shropshire it was just called the rip. Back to slushers - they were also used for dinting (increasing the cross-section of roadways by ripping out heaved floor). I once had the pleasure of driving an ancient main and tail rope haulage (my pit only used endless and direct haulages for supply work) slushing an old return airway to improve the airflow for a new face. Trouble was the haulage was outbye of the road being dinted, so after a few seconds of starting the bucket moving, inbye or outbye, I was enveloped in a cloud of choking dust. Still, I soon learnt to operate it by touch and sound, but I wasn't sorry to move onto work after a couple of weeks! I also remember 'slusher belts' - a crude version of the old bottom-loading face conveyors. The one I worked on was in a tailgate where the face was being moved foward to a new line to try and pass a 'washout' (where an ancient coal forest stream had meandered through what was later to become the coal seam, leaving much of the face with sandstone instead of coal). While the new face line was being driven and the tailgate driven inbye, a temporary conveyor was used - old narrow (18" - 24") knackered belting, with the load-carrying part running along the floor on the dirt and the return web occasionally supported by bars and other junk slung from the rings. Apart from the gearhead and the boxend there wasn't a single roller in a few hundred yards. The final stretch through the airdoors out to the main road conveyor was basically a very long, but narrow, stageloader ('Crawley' round our way when connecting an AFC or 'Panzer' with a gate conveyor), or 'snig' as I remember it being called. Anyone else remember words that were only used in the pit: Puffler, Crut, Dan, Snap, Warwick Girder, Tadger, Sylvester...I can remember dozens, and I only worked there for a couple of years over thirty years ago... Regional names can be confusing, but a "Danny" was a cable carrier for armoured cables, just had arms for the side with the armoured cable figure of eighted ready to go inbye. Snap, yep, but could be bait in the northern coalfields, Warwick's I'd say were standard throughout all coalfields in the UK, Sylvester is what we called them, but I know they had other names, Crut, Puffler and Tadger are new names to me. Cotgrave was an eye opener when Clifton closed and I got transferred. Codger End!! A Northern term for a conveyor return or tension roller..
We used Crawley Stage Loaders, I wonder if that company is still in business??? Nowadays they call those ratio feeders, they combine a chain conveyor with a rotary crusher.
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Post by John on Aug 1, 2012 17:13:13 GMT -5
A bit bigger than the slushers I remember way back..The buckets I recall were way smaller, they had to be to get under the ripping lip of a 42 inch or less seam.
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Post by Wheldale on Aug 2, 2012 4:51:48 GMT -5
A bit bigger than the slushers I remember way back..The buckets I recall were way smaller, they had to be to get under the ripping lip of a 42 inch or less seam. Yeah its a big slusher. It was in a gully that came out 90 degrees to the slope. The slushers on the stopes would be small as the stopes themselves were only about 1 meter high.
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Post by erichall on Nov 1, 2012 10:36:15 GMT -5
We used one at Skiers Spring colliery in the old South Barnsley Area. We were trialling a new Joy Roadripper, a machine with an arm holding 3 circular cutting heads (rather like 3 small shearer drums). The dirt from the rip was slushed into the roadside pack. the slusher was simply an endless rope, the machine of which was behind the Ripper, the rope going round a deflecting pulley in the centre front of the rip into the pack area, where the return wheel was staked in the goaf area (still supported). The bucket, rather like a minature drag line bucket, was dragged through the downed dirt into the pack area. The ripping machine was simply sumped in and arced round through 180 degrees.
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Mick
Shotfirer.
Posts: 163
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Post by Mick on Nov 30, 2012 18:20:34 GMT -5
All tail gate on advance facer's had slushers at Wheldale i worked on flockton 43s when i first went to wheldale . Also the drift at Gomersal was taken down with a slusher,me dad was in one of the teams that tuck over from the contractors that were sacked because they almost missed the blocking bed seam . Mick
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