Automatic Dredging Robot for Metallurgical Drainage Trench Based on Virtual Design Technology
The artificial dredging method is now used for the closed-type drainage trench of Tangshan Iron and Steel Co. Ltd., with low operation efficiency and large labor intensity. A new kind of dredging robot was presented in order to completely replace the human to clean the trench automatically. It is mainly composed of the crawler type walking mechanism, dredging chain bucket, silt conveying belt, and silt conveying carriage. Due to the adoption of the operating mode of mechanized dredging and mechanized conveying, the robot can enable the workers to get rid of the bad working environment thoroughly and overcome the various problems resulting from the artificial method. The 3D solid modeling and virtual assembly were conducted and the stability was analyzed by the use of Pro/E. It has been proved that under the condition of full load, the robot can implement the dredging operation stably and efficiently, which means that the design of the robot is feasible and effective.