Mining uses machines to extract materials from the ground, including drilling, scraping, and processing. Open pit mining involves digging large holes for sand, gravel, and copper. Sand mining extracts minerals with strip mining or flooded shaft mines. Conveyors transport materials within mining areas, and milling and processing separate and purify ores.
Mining is the extraction or removal of materials from the ground, using a wide variety of mining machines. Materials can be removed by scraping or digging them above ground, or by drilling into underground storage and moving the materials to above ground processing plants. Mining machines can be used for drilling, scraping, product conveying, and ore processing to separate wanted and waste products.
Underground mining involves drilling access holes to mineral deposits to remove them for processing. Drillers can drill access holes directly using very large rotary drill heads that grind rock and soil, and then push them away from the driller with moving conveyor belts. Rock mining blasting can use drilling machines that drill smaller holes, which are then filled with explosive chemicals that remove several feet of rock at a time. Once the rock has been blasted, digging machinery can be used to remove the rock and place it on boxcars or conveyor belts.
Open pit mining uses large holes in the ground that are dug to the depth of the desired product and are common for sand, gravel and copper mines. Mining machines called draglines use a moving bucket to scrape away the soil that lies on top of the ore deposit. Draglines can either move soil into a waste pile away from the pit or dump material into large trucks that haul it away from the site. The same trucks, capable of hauling many tons of material at a time, can be used to move the ore to nearby processing plants.
Mining is similar to open pit mining, but typically the desired mineral is closer to the surface. Draglines or large excavator front buckets are used to remove the large amounts of unwanted soil to reach the ore layers. Some mining operations will move horizontally along a mineral deposit, using newly dug topsoil to fill in the hole left after removing ore adjacent to the current mining location. This technique allows materials to be moved only once and can help reduce environmental impact by allowing the transferred soils to settle and replant.
Sand mining is used to extract both sand for construction purposes and to extract minerals such as titanium-based ores used in paints and plastics. Metal enriched sands can be extracted by strip mining machines or flooded shaft mines using dredgers similar to the equipment used to dredge harbors and canals for ships. Chemical treatment is used to extract the desired products and the remaining sands are often returned to the pit.
Conveyors are mining machines that are widely used for transporting materials within a mining area. Underground mines use conveyor belts to move ore from the drilling area to surface processing. Large boring machines use conveyor belts attached to the drill head, which move as the hole progresses and carry away the waste rock and ore. Another type of conveyor is an ore car, similar to a small railroad car, which can be loaded with material and roll along the tracks for external processing.
After the ores have been removed from any mining operation, milling and processing is commonly used to separate and purify the ores. Grinding produces a more consistent product size, which can be further separated by vibrating screens. Some materials can be separated from waste soil by flotation tanks, which use water-filled tanks that allow the desired materials to sink or float depending on their density or weight.
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