37 / 44
Mechanical Technology — February 2015
35
⎪
Innovative engineering
⎪
thousand of Euros, and the 1D level-
sensing systems costing thousands of
Euros. Following the successful instal-
lation of this radar technology on an
Eickhoff shearer loader in a coalmine,
indurad was established and registered in
2008 to take this technology to industrial
markets.
“The key differentiators for our sys-
tems are high resolution and robustness,”
claims Winkel. “To accurately and auto-
matically position a travelling hopper car
above a conveyor, a positioning accuracy
better than 10 cm is needed, which rules
out any of the sensors available for use in
motorcars. Typically, these come with an
accuracy of around one metre over a 75
to 80 m range. The accuracy of our stan-
dard sensors lies in the 5.0 cm range and
we have one sensor with an accuracy of
under10
µ
m. In addition to that, we are
the first company to offer 2D industrial
radar monitoring and control solutions, a
capability that enables operator support
ranging from predictive collision avoid-
ance all the way to machine automation,”
Winkel informs
MechTech
. The company
has also installed a 3D radar system in a
blast furnace in Austria, which demon-
strates the usability of indurad sensors for
high temperature applications.
Describing an early materials handling
success, he cites a hopper and transfer
car positioning solution at a lignite coal
mine near Aachen. In this application,
the loading unit and the transfer car
were automated to follow the bucket
wheel excavator along the length of the
bench conveyor. The loading unit runs on
tracks and travels above the bench con-
veyor with about 0.1 m of side tolerance
and within 0.5° of heading tolerance.
Additionally, the transfer conveyor head
has to be over the loading unit to within
0.2 m of lateral and 0.5 m of longitudinal
tolerance to avoid spillage. The indurad
solution allows the machine to operate
well within these limits, which were
originally set by the customer.
“This was previously achieved by op-
erators using joysticks to constantly keep
the units aligned, but it is unreasonable
to expect operators to perform this task
accurately for a full eight hour shift,”
Winkel suggests. “In this application,
the bucket wheel excavator cuts along
a 5,0 km bench and the transfer car
automatically follows the cutter, keeping
its transfer chute aligned to the bench
conveyor,” he explains. “The radar sys-
tem accurately controls the speed of the
transfer car and its alignment angle and
height relative to the conveyor,” he adds.
Another early success was the
installation of a radar solution with
ThyssenKrupp on one of its a fully mo-
bile crushing systems in China. “With
crushers, it is important to know the
quantity of material along the full length
of the feeder, to be sure that the crusher
will never be empty. If large rocks are
dumped directly onto the crushing feeder
2
3