The History Of The Development Of Mining Machinery

Mining machinery comprises the mechanical equipment used directly for the extraction of useful minerals and for preparatory mining operations. It primarily includes excavation machinery for extracting metallic and non-metallic ores; coal mining machinery for extracting coal; and petroleum drilling and extraction machinery for extracting oil, among others.
The first pneumatic disc-type coal cutter was designed by the British engineer Walker and was successfully manufactured around 1868. In the 1880s, hundreds of oil wells in the United States were successfully drilled using steam-powered percussion drills. In 1907, rotary cone drills were introduced for drilling oil and natural gas wells; subsequently, starting in 1937, these drills were also applied to drilling operations in open-pit coal mines.
Excavation machinery refers to mechanical equipment primarily utilized in both underground and open-pit mining operations. It encompasses drilling machinery for boring blast holes; excavating and loading machinery for digging and handling ore and rock; and tunneling machinery for driving raises, vertical shafts, and horizontal roadways.
Drilling machinery is broadly categorized into rock drills and exploration drills; the latter is further subdivided into open-pit drilling rigs and underground drilling rigs. Rock drills are machines designed to bore blast holes-typically ranging from 20 to 100 mm in diameter and up to 20 meters in depth-in medium-hard to hard rock formations. Based on their power source, they are classified into pneumatic, internal combustion, hydraulic, and electric rock drills, with pneumatic rock drills being the most widely used type. Open-pit drilling rigs are classified according to the specific mechanism used to break the rock, including cable percussion drills, rotary drills, rotary cone drills, and rotary-percussive drills; among these, cable percussion drills have been gradually superseded by other types due to their lower efficiency.
Tunneling machinery consists of mechanical equipment designed to directly fracture ore and rock-thereby creating roadways or shafts-by applying axial pressure and rotational force via cutting tools to generate a crushing or rolling action against the rock face. The cutting tools employed include disc cutters, wedge-toothed cutters, button cutters, and milling cutters. Depending on the specific type of roadway being excavated, this machinery is categorized into raise borers, shaft borers, and horizontal tunneling machines.