IOT News

In the ore processing plant of a large non-ferrous metal mine, the ball mill is the core piece of equipment in the grinding process. Its operating status directly determines the mineral recovery rate and overall production efficiency of the entire mine. The plant has deployed several large ball mills equipped with PLC control systems from brands such as Siemens and ABB, which manage closed-loop control of drum speed, feed rate, audio-based grinding density, bearing temperature, and lubrication systems.

However, because the equipment runs as standalone units, key process parameters—such as mill load, inlet and outlet slurry density, liner wear status, and main motor current—can only be viewed locally in the central control room. They cannot be synchronized in real time to the remote smart mining management platform. Furthermore, the traditional "manual inspection + paper record" method not only suffers from data lag but also makes it difficult to detect anomalies in a timely manner. This leads to low Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) and severely restricts the plant's digital transformation and intelligent management.

Solution

WideIOT deploys PLC smart gateways that connect to the ball mill's control system PLCs to collect real-time data on operating status, operating load, spindle speed, motor power, throughput, feed rate, and more. Using the mine's 5G network, the data is securely transmitted to the smart mining management platform, enabling remote monitoring, alarming, management, control, and statistical analysis of the ball mills. This helps improve operational efficiency and management levels.

Key Functions

The gateway features rich I/O interfaces and a built-in protocol library. It not only supports PLC data acquisition but can also directly connect to instruments such as temperature sensors, vibration transmitters, and electronic belt scales. It supports 5G/4G/Wi-Fi/wired connectivity options.

With a full metal housing and industrial-grade wide-temperature design, the gateway operates reliably in high-dust, high-electromagnetic-interference grinding environments. It also supports multi-network redundancy and data resumption after disconnection, ensuring data integrity and authenticity.

The gateway comes with built-in edge alarm rules, allowing it to clean and aggregate large volumes of data. When abnormal data is detected, it automatically notifies management personnel via WeChat, SMS, email, or audible/visual alarms, enabling rapid fault locating and corrective actions.

The gateway provides a northbound API interface, allowing standardized mill operation data—such as runtime hours, energy consumption, and throughput—to be directly integrated into the mine's MES, energy management system, or database.

Using the gateway's integrated device maintenance remote access feature, engineers can remotely upload/download programs to the ball mill PLCs and perform remote programming and debugging. This significantly reduces the frequency of business travel and lowers maintenance costs.