Industrial automation is the application of techniques, software and specific equipment to increase efficiency.

When we talk about the need to impact production processes and how solutions are configured to improve capacity, influence accident rates, or even reduce stress or human interference in the production process or the machine involved, is when we must rescue the concept of automation.

Automation comes from the Latin Automatus, which means movement by itself. If we add the idea that industrial automation is the application of techniques, software and specific equipment in an industrial process in order to increase its efficiency, maximize production with a lower consumption of energy and/or raw materials, lower the emission of waste of any kind and improve safety conditions, is when MIRS appears as an innovative manager in these matters.

Ten years after the first robotic implementation by MIRS, and with the enormous development experienced by mankind in terms of formulas, techniques and tools adapted to mining production, today the challenges are aimed at autonomy and perfect coordination of all the elements involved in mining productivity, supported and supported by robotic solutions.

For the mining industry that seeks better methods, technologies and processes to maintain and improve items such as safety, and that has the need to extract and process more competitively, process automation is the answer.

According to Ricardo Cabral, Project Manager, MIRS has developed a series of applications oriented to solve the equation Automation V/S Efficiency, through the participation in the following productive systems and developed to give continuity to the whole process in question, here is a sample of these possibilities:

– MINE

Drilling, Blasting, Loading and Transportation through solutions such as:

Robotic washer- Robotic fuel supplier – Robot to support the change of tires.

– PLANT

Crushing, Grinding, Flotation, Filtration and Dispatch through solutions such as:

Trommel pallet robotic manipulator-Mill liner robotic manipulator- Robot for nut removal and retorquing – Robotic sampler of concentrate in trucks – Robot for safe loading and unloading of acid from trucks.

– FOUNDRY

Receiving and Sampling, Melting, Conversion, Pyro-refining and Molding through solutions such as:

Robotic sampler of samples in maxibags- Robot for opening and closing passages in melting furnaces- Robotic sampler of concentrate in trucks- Robotic assembler of anode packages- Robot for safe loading and unloading of acid from trucks.

– REFINERY

Electrorefining and Electroobtendering through solutions such as:

Robotic cathode stripper- Robotic stripper of initial sheets- Robot for inspection and selection of cathodes- Robot Base Plate Polishing Robot- Robotic Cathode Sorter.

– YARD

Yard and dispatch of trucks and trains through solutions such as:

Robot for cathode inspection and sorting- Robotic cathode sorter.

Along with the development of these robotic applications, the executive states that it is very important not to lose sight of the advances that the mining industry has experienced, since they are a fundamental engine for the continuity of successful production processes, and that today oblige the sector to continue advancing. A study carried out in Japan in 1983 showed that at the beginning of that decade there were some 25 thousand robots in the Japanese nation with a useful life of 6 years, working up to 22 hours a day, 7 days a week. That is, the robot in the 6 years of life would do about 48 thousand hours of work, which is equivalent to the working hours of a person for 30 years.

If we extrapolate this equation to the national reality, the comparisons could be of the following order.

A worker with a useful working life of 40 years, with a working day of 9 hours a day for 5 days a week will be able to reach a total of 80 thousand hours of productive work in a total of 44.5 weeks. To reach the same amount of 80 thousand productive hours, a robot with a working life of 10 years, with a working day of 22 hours a day for 7 days a week will do it in a total of 52 weeks, which corroborates the capacity of the robots produced by MIRS to influence the process in an efficient and solvent way.