With the need for housing growing by the day, the demand for affordable and quality houses, roads, and pavements has also gone up. This has driven up the manufactures of concrete products in various countries thus created a requirement for quality machinery.
Qualities of Well-Mixed Concrete
Quality is by no means achieved by accident. A consistent effort and strategy must be applied to achieve high quality. A well-prepared concrete mix must have a positive slump test, grayish in color, uniformly mixed and sedimentation or separation of the sand and ballast must not occur. To achieve this, the equipment used in the preparation must be well maintained and manufactured to the standards.
Machine Requirements for High Quality Concrete
To achieve quality mix and delivery of the concrete the machine used must accurately discharge the sand, cement and aggregate in the appropriate ratios. This means that calibration of the machine is critical. To achieve this quality of the equipment must meet the industry standards
Instrumentation and control
It is always important for the control of the batching machine to be accurate. Some of the controls needed include speed regulators, which controls the speed of the motors, weight and volume controllers for determining the amount of each product in the mix. The Mixing time also needs to be regulated not to spend too much time on one batch, which is uneconomical. The hoper, which feeds the mixtures into the batching system, is also controlled to give proper coordination and achieve a good mix.
Currently computerized systems are available, which utilize logical control units to coordinate the batching process.
Products derived from concrete batching
The plant is one of the innovations that have a wide variety of applications .Some of the products that can be developed through concrete batching include roads, Bridges, fly over’s, concrete blocks and pipes. When these products are required in large quantities, automatic systems come in handy to speed up this process.
Current Innovations in Handling Processes
Concrete batching plants have undergone rapid developments geared towards improving their efficiency and performance. Modern plants have automated control systems that regulate the mixing process. Motor and pumps are controlled via programmable logic controllers (PLC) or computer guided controls, which ensure that concrete ingredients are measured with precision, and the mixing process is well controlled. The current plants have various sensors such as moisture content sensors, which detect the amount of water in the concrete mix and ensure that the mixture has the required water content. The whole plant has various sensors used to detect issues such as voltage, current, pressure, weight, to guarantee high quality mixture.
Maintaining the Integrity of Concrete Machinery
For effective operation of concrete equipment, careful maintenance routines should be followed. All active units need to be calibrated to ensure that they deliver the required amount of concrete mix ingredients. The batching plants have motors, conveyor belts, and other machineries, which move different materials. It is necessary to perform routine maintenance operations such as greasing, oiling, cleaning, changing bearings and other moving parts and replacing worn out parts. This will ensure that a high quality mixture is obtained.
Conclusion
Generally, with the use of automated cement handling machine, a strong and quality products are obtained. This makes building affordable and easy to maintain, as no repairs are needed in future.