Apron Feeders also known as plate feeder, widely used in mining, metallurgy, building materials, coal and brick industry sectors. This machine is mainly used for conveying materials of different particle size and bulk density uniformly and continuously to various crushing, screening, transportation equipment or receiving device under a certain bin pressure or under a funnel within a short conveying distance.
1.Problems after Putting into production
1.1The minimum speed of the Apron Feeder can only be set at 180r/ min. At this time, the feeding amount is still 80 ~ 100t /h, but the semi-self-grinding capacity of the later sequence is only 50t /h. Therefore, running at this speed for about 10 minutes, the motor will give off heat and trip, unable to operate steadily and continuously.
1.2The problem of production mismatch, Even if the motor does not trip when it heats up, the semi-self-grinding capacity of the rear sequence system is only 50t /h, and the feeding speed of the two places is not matching seriously, which leads to the semi-self-grinding swollen belly, and the material must be stopped at about 20 minutes after feeding, waiting for the semi-self-grinding digestion before feeding again. However, the semi - self - grinding lining plate requires continuous and even feeding, Intermission material, there will be steel ball hit lining, seriously affect the lining life.
1.3The problem of material leakage at the nose. Due to the Apron feeding machine cloth bucket on both sides of the baffle is relatively outside, some of the fine material will leak out from the bottom of the baffle plate. After the plate feeder head turns to the lower side, the fine material falls to the ground, which is just inside the bracket of the plate feeder head. Due to limited space, it cannot be cleaned in time. There are more ground blanking, which increases the labor intensity of workers.

2 Analysis and solution of the problem. Three problems can be summed up as: plate feeder feeding area is too large.Therefore, it is decided to adjust the cloth area of the plate feeder, reduce the cloth area. The volume of the coarse ore bin above the cloth bin is 1400m3, and it is made of concrete. There are no openings around, only top material entrance and bottom material exit. Because only the upper part of the cloth hopper of the plate feeder can all go out of the bottom of the coarse ore bin, there will still be part of the material around the edge that cannot go out, and a material inclined plane is formed in the coarse ore bin that tilts from all sides to the entrance of the cloth hopper, which cannot stand on. Therefore, workers cannot enter from the top, If there is any vibration, these remaining materials will roll down into the cloth bucket, affecting the construction safety below. Only after the material processing in the bin is finished, a 4mm hole is opened on both sides of the feeding hopper of the Apron Feeders to the inside every 150mm or so, and a steel grid is formed by inserting a six-edge steel rod to prevent the above material from falling, and then construction is carried out below. After the safety protection is done, remove the front and rear baffles of the cloth hopper at the side of the plate feeder, and separate each upper 200mm from the lower part of the cloth hopper, and add a 200mm channel steel on the inner side.Reduce 200mm from both sides of the feeding hopper to the inside, and seal the ground 600mm high from the plate feeder with steel plate in the rear half, so that the material can only be distributed in the space 600mm wide, 1500mm long and 600mm high in the front half, so that the whole feeding area of the plate feeder can be changed from 3000mm×1000mm to 1500mm(length) × 600mm [width], reducing the cloth area by 70%.
After the modification, the rotational speed of the plate feeder is raised to 320r/ min, which solves the problem of motor overheating. Due to the reduction of material receiving area, the material quantity can be stabilized to about 50t /h, which ensures the stable supply of semi-self-grinding and enables the continuous operation of the plate feeder. Because the width of the cloth is reduced, the two sides of the plate feeder no longer have a large number of broken material leakage, the workers cleaning time, the workload, and the labor cost. After running for a period of time, it was found that the apron feeders often stuck and broke the material. After on-site inspection, it was found that because the inner wall of the cloth warehouse was increased with channel steel to reduce the area and form a step, some materials of 250mm unqualified in the upper crushing process would get stuck here, causing the phenomenon of material breakage. In order to solve this problem, a vibration motor is added on both sides of the outer wall of the cloth warehouse. When the material is broken, the vibration motor is opened to dredge the blockage, which can solve the problems effectively of Apron feeders.