Horse mill
A horse mill is a mill, sometimes used in conjunction with a watermill or windmill, that uses a horse engine as the power source. Any milling process can be powered in this way, but the most frequent use of animal power in horse mills was for grinding grain and pumping water. Other animal engines for powering mills are powered by dogs, oxen or camels. Treadwheels are engines powered by humans; the donkey or horse-driven rotary mill was a 4th century BC Carthaginian invention, with possible origins in Carthaginian Sardinia. Two Carthaginian animal-powered millstones built using red lava from Carthaginian-controlled Mulargia in Sardinia were found in a 375–350 BC shipwreck near Mallorca; the mill spread to Sicily, arriving in Italy in the 3rd century BC. The Carthaginians used hand-powered rotary mills as early as the 6th century BC, the use of the rotary mill in Spanish lead and silver mines may have contributed to the rise of the larger, animal-powered mill, it freed the miller from most of the heavy burden of his task and increased output through the superior stamina of horses and donkeys over humans.
This horse mill has not been used since about 1830. It was rescued from Berwick Hills Low Farm in Northumberland by the museum and set up in their own gin gang at Home Farm as a non-functioning exhibit; the top of the mill's main vertical axle and the end of the main drive shaft are pivoted at the centre of their own separate tie beam, below and parallel with the main roof tie beam, set in the gin gang's side walls at either end. The mill's tie beam has to be stabilised with two massive oak beams which run, either side of the drive shaft, from tie beam to threshing barn wall. A large and basic engine like this can create great stresses from the torque engendered; this four-horse mill is based on a central, heavy, 10 feet high, oak axle, with its base pivoting on an iron framework set in the middle of the gin gang floor. Its top end pivots under the mill's own tie beam but the tie beam cannot rest on the pivot, or the mill would not turn; the main axle supports around its top end the main, 6 feet -diameter, horizontal gear wheel, with the teeth on the top surface.
The main drive shaft, a massive oak pole, is girthed at one end by a secondary gear wheel which lies on the main gear wheel, thus turning the main drive shaft on its long axis. The main drive shaft runs from the main gear wheel through a hole in the threshing barn wall and in the barn it powers the threshing machine and other machines via further cogwheels and belts; such a machine would create great torque stresses, if it were to work again it would require re-engineering to ensure smooth and safe running, beams which are seasoned and not cracked. This is a powerful horse mill for four horses; each of the four heavy oak beams connecting the central axle to the four horse shafts runs from beside the axle to the under-surface of the main gear wheel, crosses the other three in a grid pattern between the axle and gear wheel, thus supporting the gear wheel and creating a rigid structure at the same time. They project for many feet beyond the main gear wheel, require wooden stretchers to stabilise them.
From the ends of these beams hang the horse shafts. The bottom ends of these shafts are quite low, which may indicate the use of ponies rather than early heavy horses. A horse gin is on display at the Nottingham Industrial Museum, it was constructed in 1841 to sink the Langton Colliery shaft and moved in 1844 to Pinxton Green Colliery. It was still working in 1950 and it was erected in the museum in 1967, it was used at a pit head to raise coal to the surface. The Nottingham mines were shallow, coal was moved to the shaft on a sled, raised in a cage by a rope attached to a rope drum, turned by the horses in the gin. Horse'gins' were a common site in coal mining areas, were used where the coal was shallow, there was no need to sink deep mine shafts; the gin was a wooden wheel device on a spindle, pulled round by a horse. This operated a simple pulley system that raised or lowered loads up and down the shaft, they were most prolific in the Ruiton farm area of the Black Country, which extended to Cotwallend Road.
Horse'gins' were an extension of the one time illegal mining activities carried out during the Miners' Strike of 1926. Miners dug out the coal from the shallow seam through a series of shallow "Bob Holes", hauling up the coal in ordinary buckets to be transported away to be sold in the nearby village of Gornal; these activities were believed to have been the beginnings of Ellowes Colliery. The Earl of Dudley halted these activities and legalised them by giving permission for the coal to be mined on a royalty tonnage basis; the shallower coal was mined via the slope or "walking down" method using horse actuated'gins'. Two shafts and steam-driven pit gear were installed to mine the thicker coal further down; the pit closed in July 1951. The'gin' used at Ellowes Colliery was believed to be the last working example in the Black Country. In Antwerp, the Brewers' House museum is a good example of horse-powered pumping machinery; the building dates from the 16th century. The Noah Hoover Mennonites, an Old Order Mennonite group, that does not allow any engine power at all, still has several horse mills in use, both in the US and in Belize in Central America.
The mills are used to power e. g. a sorghum-ca
Sugar refinery
A sugar refinery is a refinery which processes raw sugar into white refined sugar or that processes sugar beet to refined sugar. Many cane sugar mills produce raw sugar, sugar that still contains molasses, giving it more colour than the white sugar, consumed in households and used as an ingredient in soft drinks and foods. While cane sugar does not need refining to be palatable, sugar from sugar beet is always refined to remove the strong always unwanted, taste of beets from it; the refined sugar produced is more than 99 percent pure sucrose. Whereas many sugar mills only operate during a limited time of the year during the cane harvesting period, many cane sugar refineries work the whole year round. Sugar beet refineries tend to have shorter periods when they process beet but may store intermediate product and process that in the off-season. Raw sugar is either processed into white refined sugar in local refineries, sold to the local industry and consumers, or it is exported and refined in the country of destination.
Sugar refineries are located in heavy sugar-consuming regions such as North America and Japan. Since the 1990s many state-of-the art sugar refineries have been built in the Middle East and North Africa region, e.g. in Dubai, Saudi Arabia and Algeria. The world´s largest sugar refinery company is American Sugar Refining with facilities in North America and Europe; the raw sugar is stored in large warehouses and transported into the sugar refinery by means of transport belts. In the traditional refining process, the raw sugar is first mixed with heavy syrup and centrifuged to wash away the outer coating of the raw sugar crystals, less pure than the crystal interior. Many sugar refineries today buy high pol sugar and can do without the affination process; the remaining sugar is dissolved to make a syrup, clarified by the addition of phosphoric acid and calcium hydroxide that combine to precipitate calcium phosphate. The calcium phosphate particles entrap some impurities and absorb others, float to the top of the tank, where they are skimmed off.
After any remaining solids are filtered out, the clarified syrup is decolorized by filtration through the use of bone char, made from the bones of cattle, a bed of activated carbon or, in more modern plants, ion-exchange resin. The purified syrup is concentrated to supersaturation and crystallized under vacuum to produce white refined sugar; as in a sugar mill, the sugar crystals are separated from the mother liquor by centrifuging. To produce granulated sugar, in which the individual sugar grains do not clump together, sugar must be dried. Drying is accomplished first by drying the sugar in a hot rotary dryer, by blowing cool air through Centrifugal Blower/fan it for several days in so-called conditioning silos; the finished product is stored in large concrete or steel silos. It is shipped in bulk, big bags or 25 – 50 kg bags to industrial customers or packed in consumer-size packages to retailers; the dried sugar must be handled with caution, as sugar dust explosions are possible. For example, a sugar dust explosion which led to 13 fatalities was the 2008 Georgia sugar refinery explosion in Port Wentworth, GA.
Molasses Bagasse Press Mud As in many other industries factory automation has been promoted in sugar refineries in recent decades. The production process is controlled by a central process control system, which directly controls most of the machines and components. Only for certain special machines such as the centrifuges in the sugar house decentralized PLCs are used for security reasons. Onses, Richard. Continuous dissolution process for sugar, in Alimentacion Equipos y Tecnologio, Editorial Alcion, May 1987. Barcelona. Sugar related online glossary. Sugar refining. Centrifugal control and the quality of white sugar by Barbara Rogé et. al. retrieved on 27 June, 2010
Textile manufacturing
Textile manufacturing is a major industry. It is based on the conversion of fiber into yarn into fabric; these are dyed or printed, fabricated into clothes. Different types of fibers are used to produce yarn. Cotton remains the most important natural fiber. There are many variable processes available at the spinning and fabric-forming stages coupled with the complexities of the finishing and colouration processes to the production of a wide ranges of products. There remains a large industry. Cotton is the world's most important natural fibre. In the year 2007, the global yield was 25 million tons from 35 million hectares cultivated in more than 50 countries. There are six stages: Cultivating and Harvesting Preparatory Processes Spinning Weaving or Knitting Finishing Marketing Cotton is grown anywhere with long, hot dry summers with plenty of sunshine and low humidity. Indian cotton, gossypium arboreum, is finer but the staple is only suitable for hand processing. American cotton, gossypium hirsutum, produces the longer staple needed for machine production.
Planting is from September to mid November and the crop is harvested between March and June. The cotton bolls are harvested by stripper harvesters and spindle pickers, that remove the entire boll from the plant; the cotton boll is the seed pod of the cotton plant, attached to each of the thousands of seeds are fibres about 2.5 cm long. GinningThe seed cotton goes into a Cotton gin; the cotton gin removes the "trash" from the fibre. In a saw gin, circular saws grab the fibre and pull it through a grating, too narrow for the seeds to pass. A roller gin is used with longer staple cotton. Here a leather roller captures the cotton. A knife blade, set close to the roller, detaches the seeds by drawing them through teeth in circular saws and revolving brushes which clean them away; the ginned cotton fibre, known as lint, is compressed into bales which are about 1.5 m tall and weigh 220 kg. Only 33% of the crop is usable lint. Commercial cotton is priced by quality, that broadly relates to the average length of the staple, the variety of the plant.
Longer staple cotton is called Egyptian, medium staple is called American upland and short staple is called Indian. The cotton seed is pressed into a cooking oil; the husks and meal are processed into animal feed, the stems into paper. Ginning, bale-making and transportation is done in the country of origin. Opening and cleaning Cotton mills get the cotton shipped to them in 500 pound bales; when the cotton comes out of a bale, it still contains vegetable matter. The bale is broken open using a machine with large spikes, it is called an Opener. In order to fluff up the cotton and remove the vegetable matter, the cotton is sent through a picker, or similar machines; the cotton is fed into a machine known as a picker, gets beaten with a beater bar in order to loosen it up. It is fed through various rollers; the cotton, aided by fans collects on a screen and gets fed through more rollers till it emerges as a continuous soft fleecy sheet, known as a lap. Blending and ScutchingScutching refers to the process of cleaning cotton of its seeds and other impurities.
The first scutching machine was invented in 1797, but did not come into further mainstream use until after 1808 or 1809, when it was introduced and used in Manchester, England. By 1816, it had become adopted; the scutching machine worked by passing the cotton through a pair of rollers, striking it with iron or steel bars called beater bars or beaters. The beaters, which turn quickly, strike the cotton hard and knock the seeds out; this process is done over a series of parallel bars so as to allow the seeds to fall through. At the same time, air is blown across the bars. Carding Carding: the fibres are separated and assembled into a loose strand at the conclusion of this stage; the cotton comes off of the picking machine in laps, is taken to carding machines. The carders line up the fibres nicely to make them easier to spin; the carding machine consists of one big roller with smaller ones surrounding it. All of the rollers are covered in small teeth, as the cotton progresses further on the teeth get finer.
The cotton leaves the carding machine in the form of a sliver. Note: In a wider sense Carding can refer to these four processes: Willowing- loosening the fibres. Combing is used to remove the shorter fibres, creating a stronger yarn. Drawing the fibres are straightenedSeveral slivers are combined; each sliver will have thin and thick spots, by combining several slivers together a more consistent size can be reached. Since combining several slivers produces a thick rope of cotton fibres, directly after being combined the slivers are separated into rovings; these rovings are what are used in the spinning process. Speaking, for machine processing, a roving is about the width of a pencil. Drawing frame: Draws the strand out Slubbing Frame: adds twist, winds onto bobbins Intermediate Frames: are used to repeat the slubbing process to produce a finer yarn. Roving frames: reduces to a finer thread, gives more twist, makes more regular and in thickness, winds onto a smaller tube. Sp
Extrusion
Extrusion is a process used to create objects of a fixed cross-sectional profile. A material is pushed through a die of the desired cross-section; the two main advantages of this process over other manufacturing processes are its ability to create complex cross-sections, to work materials that are brittle, because the material only encounters compressive and shear stresses. It forms parts with an excellent surface finish. Drawing is a similar process, which uses the tensile strength of the material to pull it through the die; this limits the amount of change which can be performed in one step, so it is limited to simpler shapes, multiple stages are needed. Drawing is the main way to produce wire. Metal bars and tubes are often drawn. Extrusion may be semi-continuous; the extrusion process can be done with the material cold. Extruded materials include metals, ceramics, modelling clay, foodstuffs; the products of extrusion are called "extrudates". Referred to as "hole flanging", hollow cavities within extruded material cannot be produced using a simple flat extrusion die, because there would be no way to support the centre barrier of the die.
Instead, the die assumes the shape of a block with depth, beginning first with a shape profile that supports the center section. The die shape internally changes along its length into the final shape, with the suspended center pieces supported from the back of the die; the material flows around the fuses together to create the desired closed shape. The extrusion process in metals may increase the strength of the material. In 1797, Joseph Bramah patented the first extrusion process for making pipe out of soft metals, it involved preheating the metal and forcing it through a die via a hand-driven plunger. In 1820 Thomas Burr implemented that process with a hydraulic press. At that time the process was called "squirting". In 1894, Alexander Dick expanded the extrusion process to brass alloys; the process begins by heating the stock material. It is loaded into the container in the press. A dummy block is placed behind it where the ram presses on the material to push it out of the die. Afterward the extrusion is stretched in order to straighten it.
If better properties are required it may be heat treated or cold worked. The extrusion ratio is defined as the starting cross-sectional area divided by the cross-sectional area of the final extrusion. One of the main advantages of the extrusion process is that this ratio can be large while still producing quality parts. Hot extrusion is a hot working process, which means it is done above the material's recrystallization temperature to keep the material from work hardening and to make it easier to push the material through the die. Most hot extrusions are done on horizontal hydraulic presses that range from 230 to 11,000 metric tons. Pressures range from 30 to 700 MPa, therefore lubrication is required, which can be oil or graphite for lower temperature extrusions, or glass powder for higher temperature extrusions; the biggest disadvantage of this process is its cost for its upkeep. The extrusion process is economical when producing between several kilograms and many tons, depending on the material being extruded.
There is a crossover point. For instance, some steels become more economical to roll. Aluminium hot extrusion die Cold extrusion is done at near room temperature; the advantages of this over hot extrusion are the lack of oxidation, higher strength due to cold working, closer tolerances, better surface finish, fast extrusion speeds if the material is subject to hot shortness. Materials that are cold extruded include: lead, aluminum, zirconium, molybdenum, vanadium and steel. Examples of products produced by this process are: collapsible tubes, fire extinguisher cases, shock absorber cylinders and gear blanks. In March 1956, a US Patent was filed for "process for warm extrusion of metal." Patent US3156043 A outlines that a number of important advantages can be achieved with warm extrusion of both ferrous and non-ferrous metals and alloys if a billet to be extruded is changed in its physical properties in response to physical forces by being heated to a temperature below the critical melting point.
Warm extrusion is done above room temperature, but below the recrystallization temperature of the material the temperatures ranges from 800 to 1800 °F. It is used to achieve the proper balance of required forces and final extrusion properties. Friction extrusion was invented at The Welding Institute in the UK and patented in 1991, it was intended as a method for production of homogenous microstructures and particle distributions in metal matrix composite materials. Friction extrusion differs from conventional extrusion in that the charge rotates relative to the extrusion die. An extrusion force is applied so as to push the charge against the die. In practice either the die or the charge may rotate or they may be counter-rotating; the relative rotary motion between the charge and the die has several significant effects on the process. First, the relative motion in the plane of rotation leads to large shear stresses, plastic deformation in the layer of charge in contact with and near the die; this plastic deformation is dissipated by recovery and recrystallization processes
Windmill
A windmill is a structure that converts the energy of wind into rotational energy by means of vanes called sails or blades. Centuries ago, windmills were used to mill grain, pump water, or both. There are windmills; the majority of modern windmills take the form of wind turbines used to generate electricity, or windpumps used to pump water, either for land drainage or to extract groundwater. Windmills first appeared in Persia in the 9th century AD, were independently invented in Europe; the windwheel of the Greek engineer Hero of Alexandria in the first century is the earliest known instance of using a wind-driven wheel to power a machine. Another early example of a wind-driven wheel was the prayer wheel, used in Tibet and China since the fourth century; the first practical windmills had sails. According to Ahmad Y. al-Hassan, these panemone windmills were invented in eastern Persia, or Khorasan, as recorded by the Persian geographer Estakhri in the ninth century. The authenticity of an earlier anecdote of a windmill involving the second caliph Umar is questioned on the grounds that it appears in a tenth-century document.
Made of six to 12 sails covered in reed matting or cloth material, these windmills were used to grind grain or draw up water, were quite different from the European vertical windmills. Windmills were in widespread use across the Middle East and Central Asia, spread to China and India from there. A similar type of horizontal windmill with rectangular blades, used for irrigation, can be found in thirteenth-century China, introduced by the travels of Yelü Chucai to Turkestan in 1219. Horizontal windmills were built, in small numbers, in Europe during the 18th and nineteenth centuries, for example Fowler's Mill at Battersea in London, Hooper's Mill at Margate in Kent; these early modern examples seem not to have been directly influenced by the horizontal windmills of the Middle and Far East, but to have been independent inventions by engineers influenced by the Industrial Revolution. Due to a lack of evidence, debate occurs among historians as to whether or not Middle Eastern horizontal windmills triggered the original development of European windmills.
In northwestern Europe, the horizontal-axis or vertical windmill is believed to date from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in the triangle of northern France, eastern England and Flanders. The earliest certain reference to a windmill in Europe dates from 1185, in the former village of Weedley in Yorkshire, located at the southern tip of the Wold overlooking the Humber Estuary. A number of earlier, but less dated, twelfth-century European sources referring to windmills have been found; these earliest mills were used to grind cereals. The evidence at present is that the earliest type of European windmill was the post mill, so named because of the large upright post on which the mill's main structure is balanced. By mounting the body this way, the mill is able to rotate to face the wind direction; the body contains all the milling machinery. The first post mills were of the sunken type, where the post was buried in an earth mound to support it. A wooden support was developed called the trestle.
This was covered over or surrounded by a roundhouse to protect the trestle from the weather and to provide storage space. This type of windmill was the most common in Europe until the nineteenth century, when more powerful tower and smock mills replaced them. In a hollow-post mill, the post on which the body is mounted is hollowed out, to accommodate the drive shaft; this makes it possible to drive machinery below or outside the body while still being able to rotate the body into the wind. Hollow-post mills driving scoop wheels were used in the Netherlands to drain wetlands from the fourteenth century onwards. By the end of the thirteenth century, the masonry tower mill, on which only the cap is rotated rather than the whole body of the mill, had been introduced; the spread of tower mills came with a growing economy that called for larger and more stable sources of power, though they were more expensive to build. In contrast to the post mill, only the cap of the tower mill needs to be turned into the wind, so the main structure can be made much taller, allowing the sails to be made longer, which enables them to provide useful work in low winds.
The cap can be turned into the wind either by winches or gearing inside the cap or from a winch on the tail pole outside the mill. A method of keeping the cap and sails into the wind automatically is by using a fantail, a small windmill mounted at right angles to the sails, at the rear of the windmill; these are fitted to tail poles of post mills and are common in Great Britain and English-speaking countries of the former British Empire and Germany but rare in other places. Around some parts of the Mediterranean Sea, tower mills with fixed caps were built because the wind's direction varied little most of the time; the smock mill is a development of the tower mill, where the masonry tower is replaced by a wooden framework, called the "smock", thatched, boarded or covered by other materials, such as slate, sheet metal, or tar paper. The smock is of octagonal plan, though there are examples with different numbers of sides; the lighter weight than tower mills make smock mills practical as drainage mills, which had t
Sawmill
A sawmill or lumber mill is a facility where logs are cut into lumber. Modern saw mills use a motorized saw to cut logs lengthwise to make long pieces, crosswise to length depending on standard or custom sizes; the "portable" saw mill is iconic and of simple operation—the logs lay flat on a steel bed and the motorized saw cuts the log horizontally along the length of the bed, by the operator manually pushing the saw. The most basic kind of saw mill consists of a chainsaw and a customized jig, with similar horizontal operation. Before the invention of the sawmill, boards were made in various manual ways, either rived and planed, hewn, or more hand sawn by two men with a whipsaw, one above and another in a saw pit below; the earliest known mechanical mill is the Hierapolis sawmill, a Roman water-powered stone mill at Hierapolis, Asia Minor dating back to the 3rd century AD. Other water-powered mills followed and by the 11th century they were widespread in Spain and North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia, in the next few centuries, spread across Europe.
The circular motion of the wheel was converted to a reciprocating motion at the saw blade. Only the saw was powered, the logs had to be loaded and moved by hand. An early improvement was the development of a movable carriage water powered, to move the log through the saw blade. By the time of the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century, the circular saw blade had been invented, with the development of steam power in the 19th century, a much greater degree of mechanisation was possible. Scrap lumber from the mill provided a source of fuel for firing the boiler; the arrival of railroads meant that logs could be transported to mills rather than mills being built besides navigable waterways. By 1900, the largest sawmill in the world was operated by the Atlantic Lumber Company in Georgetown, South Carolina, using logs floated down the Pee Dee River from the Appalachian Mountains. In the 20th century the introduction of electricity and high technology furthered this process, now most sawmills are massive and expensive facilities in which most aspects of the work is computerized.
Besides the sawn timber, use is made of all the by-products including sawdust, bark and wood pellets, creating a diverse offering of forest products. A sawmill's basic operation is much like those of hundreds of years ago. After trees are selected for harvest, the next step in logging is felling the trees, bucking them to length. Branches are cut off the trunk; this is known as limbing. Logs are taken by rail or a log drive to the sawmill. Logs are scaled either upon arrival at the mill. Debarking removes bark from the logs. Decking is the process for sorting the logs by species and end use. A sawyer uses a head saw to break the log into flitches. Depending upon the species and quality of the log, the cants will either be further broken down by a resaw or a gang edger into multiple flitches and/or boards. Edging will trim off all irregular edges leaving four-sided lumber. Trimming squares the ends at typical lumber lengths. Drying removes occurring moisture from the lumber; this can be done with kilns or air-dried.
Planing smooths the surface of the lumber leaving a uniform thickness. Shipping transports the finished lumber to market; the Hierapolis sawmill, a water-powered stone saw mill at Hierapolis, Asia Minor, dating to the second half of the 3rd century, is the earliest known sawmill. It incorporates a crank and connecting rod mechanism. Water-powered stone sawmills working with cranks and connecting rods, but without gear train, are archaeologically attested for the 6th century at the Byzantine cities Gerasa and Ephesus; the earliest literary reference to a working sawmill comes from a Roman poet, who wrote a topographical poem about the river Moselle in Germany in the late 4th century AD. At one point in the poem he describes the shrieking sound of a watermill cutting marble. Marble sawmills seem to be indicated by the Christian saint Gregory of Nyssa from Anatolia around 370/390 AD, demonstrating a diversified use of water-power in many parts of the Roman Empire. By the 11th century, hydropowered sawmills were in widespread use in the medieval Islamic world, from Islamic Spain and North Africa in the west to Central Asia in the east.
Sawmills became widespread in medieval Europe, as one was sketched by Villard de Honnecourt in c. 1250. They are claimed to have been introduced to Madeira following its discovery in c. 1420 and spread in Europe in the 16th century. Prior to the invention of the sawmill, boards were rived and planed, or more sawn by two men with a whipsaw, using saddleblocks to hold the log, a saw pit for the pitman who worked below. Sawing was slow, required strong and hearty men; the topsawer had to be the stronger of the two because the saw was pulled in turn by each man, the lower had the advantage of gravity. The topsawyer had to guide the saw so that the board was of thickness; this was done by following a chalkline. Early sawmills adapted the whipsaw to mechanical power driven by a water wheel to speed up the process; the circular motion of the wheel was changed to back-and-forth motion of the saw blade by a connecting rod known as a pitman arm. Only the saw was powered, the logs had to be lo
Crusher
A crusher is a machine designed to reduce large rocks into smaller rocks, gravel, or rock dust. Crushers may be used to reduce the size, or change the form, of waste materials so they can be more disposed of or recycled, or to reduce the size of a solid mix of raw materials, so that pieces of different composition can be differentiated. Crushing is the process of transferring a force amplified by mechanical advantage through a material made of molecules that bond together more and resist deformation more, than those in the material being crushed do. Crushing devices hold material between two parallel or tangent solid surfaces, apply sufficient force to bring the surfaces together to generate enough energy within the material being crushed so that its molecules separate from, or change alignment in relation to, each other; the earliest crushers were hand-held stones, where the weight of the stone provided a boost to muscle power, used against a stone anvil. Querns and mortars are types of these crushing devices.
In industry, crushers are machines which use a metal surface to break or compress materials into small fractional chunks or denser masses. Throughout most of industrial history, the greater part of crushing and mining part of the process occurred under muscle power as the application of force concentrated in the tip of the miners pick or sledge hammer driven drill bit. Before explosives came into widespread use in bulk mining in the mid-nineteenth century, most initial ore crushing and sizing was by hand and hammers at the mine or by water powered trip hammers in the small charcoal fired smithies and iron works typical of the Renaissance through the early-to-middle industrial revolution, it was only after explosives, early powerful steam shovels produced large chunks of materials, chunks reduced by hammering in the mine before being loaded into sacks for a trip to the surface, chunks that were also to lead to rails and mine railways transporting bulk aggregations that post-mine face crushing became necessary.
The earliest of these were in the foundries, but as coal took hold the larger operations became the coal breakers that fueled industrial growth from the first decade of the 1600s to the replacement of breakers in the 1970s through the fuel needs of the present day. The gradual coming of that era and displacement of the cottage industry based economies was itself accelerated first by the utility of wrought and cast iron as a desired materials giving impetus to larger operations in the late-sixteenth century by the increasing scarcity of wood lands for charcoal production to make the newfangled window glass material that had become—along with the chimney—'all the rage' among the growing middle-class and affluence of the sixteenth-and-seventeenth centuries. Other metallurgical developments such as silver and gold mining mirrored the practices and developments of the bulk material handling methods and technologies feeding the burgeoning appetite for more and more iron and glass, both of which were rare in personal possessions until the 1700s.
Things only became worse when the English figured out how to cast the more economical iron cannons, following on their feat of becoming the armorers of the European continent's powers by having been leading producers brass and bronze guns, by various acts of Parliament banned or restricted the further cutting of trees for charcoal in larger and larger regions in the United Kingdom. In 1611, a consortium led by courtier Edward Zouch was granted a patent for the reverberatory furnace, a furnace using coal, not precious national timber reserves, employed in glass making. An early politically connected and wealthy Robber Baron figure Sir Robert Mansell bought his way into the fledgling furnace company wrested control of it, by 1615 managed to have James I issued a proclamation forbidding the use of wood to produce glass, giving his families extensive coal holdings a monopoly on both source and means of production for nearly half-a-century. Abraham Darby a century relocated to Bristol where he had established a building brass and bronze industry by importing Dutch workers and using them to raid Dutch techniques.
Both materials were considered superior to iron for cannon, machines as they were better understood. But Darby would change the world in several key ways. Where the Dutch had failed in casting iron, one of Darby's apprentices, John Thomas succeeded in 1707 and as Burke put it: "had given England the key to the Industrial Revolution". At the time and foundries were all small enterprises except for the tin mines and materials came out of the mines hammered small by legions of miners who had to stuff their work into carry sacks for pack animal slinging. Concurrently, mines needed drained resulting in Savery and Newcomen's early steam driven pumping systems; the deeper the mines went, the larger the demand became for better pumps, the greater the demand for iron, the greater the need for coal, the greater the demand for each. Seeing ahead Darby, sold off his brass business interests and relocated to Coalbrookdale with its plentiful coal mines, water power and nearby ore supplies. Over that decade his foundries developed iron casting technologies and began to supplant other metals in many applications.
He adapted Coking of his fuel by copying Brewers practices. In 1822 the pumping industries needs for larger cylinders met up with Darby's ability to melt sufficient quantities of pig iron to cast large in
