Epiroc Rock Drills AB in Örebro manufactures and develops machinery for the infrastructure required to maintain a fully operational mining industry, such as ventilation, drilling rigs, trucks and loaders etc. In these environmentally conscious times, a large market focus forzero emission machines has begun to emerge. By replacing today'sinternal combustion engines, mining companies can save large sums of money in ventilation costs and fuel while creating a more pleasant working environment in the mines. Due to these rapidly changing needs, Epiroc's machines must also change in design and performance. Epiroc has thus chosen to use interchangeable batteries in their new generation of mining machines. When the battery is discharged, it must be easy to replace with a fullycharged one. From an economic point of view, it is also important that the machine is always in production without any stops, making fast and efficient battery switches desirable. At present, the battery change is usually done with a mono-rail crane down the mine. This has proved to be very difficult and ineffective as the battery is too often jammed into the machine due to the fact that the machine is poorly positioned against the crane. Ceiling heightis also a problem, preferably one should have about 6-7 meters to accomplish a safe lift with the crane, which is not always possible down in a mine. In order to find a more long-term solution to this problem, this degree project took its start. During the course of the process, a number of methods in product development and concept generation have been used to develop different concepts and screen them based on the needs identified at the beginning of the work. The main problem was divided into four sub problems to facilitate conceptgeneration, the most promising sub concepts were visualized using CAD and then put together in different combinations. These combinations were then evaluated against today's solution to easily see what concept should be further developed. This resulted in a concept that consists of a separate platform,which can either be placed on a vehicle or as a stand-alone station. On this platform there are two telescopic arms, one on each side. These arms lifts the three ton heavy battery from the mining machine in an arcuate motion over a charged battery on the platform, placing it in a designated location and then lifts the charged battery into the machine. With this concept, it is also possible to accomplish a safe change with a limited ceiling height of approximately 3.5-4 meters, which is an improvement compared to today's solution.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-353983 |
| Date | January 2018 |
| Creators | Örvill, Andreas |
| Publisher | Uppsala universitet, Industriell teknik |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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