A few reasons you really need a rockpro sampler:
Productivity & economics
If taking samples by shoveling off of a conveyor belt the plant must be shut down, the sample taker person must lock out the conveyor, climb up beside the belt, shovel a sample off, climb down, and remove their lock. Then the plant must be restarted and be brought back up to full rates. To be very generous let’s say this can all be accomplished in only 4 minutes.
So for an example let’s use a crusher producing 500 tonne/ hr that is having samples taken at the standard 1000 tonne intervals. This crusher will lose 4 minutes of crushing every 2 hours to take samples. This is over 3% of your available run time! Assuming the crusher runs 11hrs/ shift, at the end of just one shift this is 22 minutes lost or 183 tonnes!
Based on these numbers we feel that for some operations a manual sample taker will pay for itself in as little as one month. And an automatic in as little as just a few months!
Another way to look at it: At 500t/h you’re crushing 8.3 tonne a minute. 4 minutes lost per sample when shutting down. That’s 33 tonne lost production per sample. So at even $3/ tonne that’s $100/ sample you’re saving.
Don’t even get us started on using a big dollar load out bin for no other reason than just to be able to take samples without shutting down….
Accurate & Representative Samples
Shutting down to take samples can be tricky. Just hitting the Emergency Shutdown Button at full rates can cause conveyors to pile up. This is especially true of any conveyors that screen decks shake onto. The conveyors stop almost instantly but the decks continue to shake for much longer and belts can become overloaded. They may spin out on restart or worse yet cause spillage that can get into tail pulleys and damage the conveyor belt or spill down onto other conveyor belts causing contamination of different products.
To prevent these situations often the feed rate is either turned down to the plant before sampling or the crusher is shut down one piece at a time starting at the feed end and working back towards where the sample is taken. The problem with both these methods is it is hard to ensure an accurate sample is being provided that is truly representative of the product that is being produced into the stockpile during normal running. Anything that is modified during the time a sample is being taken that in turn effects the bed depth on the screen decks or how the crushers are operating will also change the product characteristics.
RockPro samplers can be used at any time to take a sample without having to worry about shutting down. The sample can be taken at full rates and will be representative of what the crusher is producing during normal operation.
safety
We probably almost all know someone who has either been injured or who has had a near miss while shoveling a sample off of a conveyor belt. Working around rotating equipment and climbing up or down stairs or ladders with heavy sample buckets puts people at risk. There is simply no need to put people in these situations. The RockPro Samplers keep workers away from rotating conveyor components and they can be operated from ground level.