Mucking Method Technique and Equipment

Once the ore or rock has been broken by explosives it is called muck; the pile of broken ore is called the muck pile. This ore must be loaded into either trucks or rail cars to be transported to an ore pass for further transfer to surface. The loading procedure is called mucking. A wide variety of loaders and haulers is available to mining companies.

The load-haul-dump (LHD) machine is perhaps the most common mucking machine. These rubber-tired machines range in size from very small, compact units with buckets that can handle 0.4 cubic metres (14 cubic feet) of muck to the much larger units equipped with 6-cubic-metre (212-cubic-foot) buckets or greater. LHDs can be powered by electric motors or by diesel engines. In mines where haulage distances are great, LHDs are used to load haulage trucks or rail cars, which then haul the ore (or rock) to surface via a ramp, or to an ore pass, a vertical working the ore can be dumped down — like laundry or garbage down a chute. From the ore pass the ore either goes to an underground crusher or is hoisted to surface.

Continuous mucking machines lift the muck from the floor directly on to a conveyor belt which then loads it into a truck or on to another conveyor. High-speed electric trolley trucks can also be used to bring the ore to surface. Conveyor belts, too, are finding more applications in underground mines (for transporting ore to an ore pass or crusher). Such large-volume mucking systems are usually restricted to mines that use bulk mining methods in the thousands-of-tonnes-per-day range.