Particle Size Distribution Measurement on Conveyor Belt using 3D Imaging : 3DPM
Transforming your grinding, crushing, & agglomerating performance is possible now by getting the right online particle size distribution data to enable a step change in process control, so you get more out of your process.
Identify out-of-spec production before it causes excess wear, damage, maintenance rework, blockages, falling rock safety hazards and other problems. Improve throughput & stability and reduce energy consumption.
3DPM is our world-leading real-time particle size distribution measurement system for bulk material on conveyor that mitigates critical sources of measurement error that other systems do not, giving you a reliable, consistent measurement over years of operation.
Lets you see real and significant variation in the particle size that would otherwise be hidden, and does not need any belt-cuts, human-input, model-fiting, or distribution "calibration".
"3DPM has been running reliably for the last 5 years with only minor maintenance required and is an active part of the mill control strategy on an on-going basis" Paul Hudson IGO, and Greg Gomes-Sebastaio ImproveIO (MetPlant 2023).
3DPM is used on a range of materials including metal ores, limestone, coke, iron ore pellets, sinter and mixed products, for both quality control and process control. Often referred to as fragmentation measurement in the mining industry, 3DPM can measure a widely varying size of material such as blasted ore where particles can reach half a meter, down to small manufactured particles streams of a few millimetres.
3DPM is a partnership between Innovative Machine Vision and Swedish engineering firm Optimation (formally MBV-Systems).
Contact us to discuss your needs
Transform your process
- Quickly detect out-of-spec production before downstream process circuits become overloaded, stockpiles become filled with out-of-spec product, and equipment damage leads to costly maintenance and downtime
- Prevent chute blockage, downtime and falling rock safety incidents by detecting and alarming on boulders/rock bolts/drill rods/poly pipe and other foreign objects.
- Improve safety by removing people from crusher gap testing
- Control processes in real-time to reduce out-of-spec production and optimise your process
- Reduce SAG/AG energy consumption, liner wear, and instances of mill instability
Customer examples
- Real-time detection and alarm of boulders and foreign-objects
- Rio Tinto Iron Ore using 3DPM for feedback to blasting and primary crusher feedback, with the results published at World Mining Congress 2023 "The use of machines as sensors to optimise drill and blast outcomes".
- IGO's Nova mine in Western Australia uses 3DPM's size distribution as input to their model predictive controller for the SAG mill, and 3DPM detection of foreign-objects to prevent chute blockages and production losses.
- IGO and ImproveIO publish their SAG mill control using 3DPM at MetPlant 2023 conference "SAG Mill Stability and Control Improvements at the Nova Nickel-Copper Operation"
- JFE Steel uses multiple 3DPM systems for blast furnace optimization
- Fully automatic control of an agglomeration circuit
- Boliden uses 3DPM to measure the size input to their large autogenous grinding mills and establish an agreed size benchmark between the mine and the mill. Boliden has been using 3DPM since 2012 and have systems across their Tara, Garpenberg and Aitik mines in Ireland and Sweden.
- International Mining Magazine June 2020: Visualising the future of particle measurements with 3DPM
3DPM provides
- Confidence that the measurement is reliable and a realistic representation of the material that was visible on the conveyor at the time of measurement
- Consistent, non-contact, high speed and fully automated
- Accurate measurement of size based on 3D imaging (no scaling and perspective distortion errors)
- Identification of non-overlapped and overlapped particles, mitigating errors from mis-sizing overlapped particles as smaller sizes
- Identification of areas-of-fines mitigating errors from mis-sizing them as large particles
- Reliable measurement as key opposing errors from overlapped particles and areas-of-fines are mitigated
- Reliable, automated, consistent measurement 24 hours a day, 7 days a week
- Results that facilitate fully automatic control of particle processes such as; agglomeration, pelletisation, and crushing
- Extremely low maintenance (years)
- Results based on a solid foundation of 20 years of evidence-based research, peer-reviewed publications, products, and industry prototypes by IMV's Principal Scientist Matthew Thurley. Connect with Matthew on LinkedIn