The production of finished stone products is mainly composed of block mining and stone processing. With the improvement of materials, machinery and equipment, the technology of block mining is constantly changing. With the high output rate and the circulation of stone materials with good integrity to the market, it also brings about the upgrading of stone application.
From the perspective of technology, stone mining includes three stages of evolution.
Ⅰ Stone Mining By Manpower
Manpower and handwork were the main methods for ancient people to mine stone materials. The earliest mining method was to use the natural cracks of the stone itself, pry with tools or insert a dry wooden wedge into these cracks, and use the expansion force generated by the expansion of the wooden wedge to separate the stone from the rock mass after watering. For example, this method is used in the stone mining of the pyramids in Egypt.
Another method is to burn wood by flame cutting, and use the principle of different granite components and different linear expansion coefficients to break stones and form grooves on the rock mass, so that stones can be separated from the rock mass.
Ⅱ Stone Mining By Simple Equipments
After entering the industrial revolution period, on the basis of the original use of iron hammer, steel drill rod and steel wedge to manually drill holes and split mining on the rock mass, people invented the early mechanical jacking device. The jacking device with positive and negative screw mechanism was put into the rock crack, and the stone was separated from the rock mass by mechanical force. This is the original prototype of the hydraulic jacking machine used today. More than 100 years ago, the Belgian invented the world’s first wire rope stone sawing machine, making a major breakthrough in marble mining technology. Of course, the wire rope used by this stone sawing machine is thicker than that of modern stone sawing machines, and the linear speed of the wire rope is also lower. But it is precisely because of these simple stone mining equipment that today’s advanced mechanized mining equipment has gradually evolved.
Ⅲ Stone Mining By Modern Equipments
In recent decades, with the rapid development of industrial technology in the world, stone mining technology, mining methods and mining equipment have been continuously improved. At present, mechanized stone mining has become the mainstream of stone mining in developed countries.
Wire rope saws (the earliest marble sawing and mining machinery, which has been replaced by diamond bead saws more than ten years ago), diamond bead saws, arm mining saws, diamond mining band saws and corresponding auxiliary supporting machinery used for marble mining have been widely used for mining marble blocks.
The main and auxiliary mechanical equipment for granite mining, such as flame cutting machine, diamond bead saw, single head or multi head bench drill of various structural forms, hydraulic splitting machine, hydraulic jacking machine, air pressure and water pressure pushing bag, as well as lifting equipment such as various mast cranes, are also widely used in granite mining.
These equipment have been combined in different forms to form complete sets of mining equipment with different patterns, mining processes and production scales, basically meeting the needs of mechanized mining of stones.
