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Carney Company Expands Rock Wool INTIFF'S ;hibit Plant at Mankato for Third Time New Batt Unit Increases Output To 50,000,000 Sq, Ft, Annually THE Carney Company of pany was again swamped with hai k SMankato, Minn., was the first concern in the north west section of the United States to undertake the orders, and a third expansion pro gram involving expenditures of more than $100,000 was launched. Completed by mid-1947, this pru- production of mineral wool. The first facilities for its production went into operation at Mankato in 1939. By WILLIAM M. AVERY after extensive pilot plant studies at the company's cement mill. Since that time repeated expansion pro grams have been carried out in a determined effort to keep abreast with the soaring demand for this prime insulating material. In 1940 production was doubled with the installation of a second cupola, and at the same time a batt machine was added to the plant. In 1942 a third cupola was built. Notwithstanding this rapid ex gram included the installation of a fourth cupola and a second batt machine, increasing Carney's pro duction of Golden Fleece insulation batts to about 30,000,000 sq. ft. per year. The batt machines now in operation produce close to 213,000 sq. ft. of house and industrial batts every 24 hours. Output of granu lated wool runs about 30 tons per cupola per day, or 60 tons for the plant. pansion of what started out as a The Carney Company controls sideline business, by 1946 the com- several hundred acres of main quar ry land comprising nearly 30,000,000 The delivery end of the Co rosy Company'! naw root wool batt machine at Mankato, Minn. Splittar knivai in tha foreground cut the blanket into strips of tha required width. Tha pewar cross-cut knifa in tha background automatically cuts tha batts to langth. tons of stone, in addition to several smaller parcels aggregating some 10,000,000 tons. With one excep tion, these deposits contain all the materials needed in the production of C.nMia's growing list ot products. Slag for rock wool production is shipped in hv rail from Illinois and Indiana, and blended with quarry shale to make up the feed for the cupolas. Straight stone feed, which was used for a time, was found to melt at about half the speed of slag, and to consume correspond ingly larger quantities of coke. The main quarry, which is lo cated adjacent to the rock wool plant, also supplies stone for the production of natural cement, masonry cement, bricklayer's mor tar, mason's lime and crushed stone products. The 35-ft. face is worked on 10-ft. ledges, using an IngersollRand wagon drill, and firing 50 to 75 holes instantaneously with Du Pont 40-percent dynamite and elec tric caps. The stone shatters well and requires relatively little second ary blasting. Loading is done with a 94-cu. yd. Link-Belt Speeder shovel into end dump trucks which make the 1,500-ft. haul to tne crushing plant. The pink shale used in rock wool production lies in a 3-ft. stratum under about 14 ft. of lime rock. a.."'.1- Thu wool blankot is formed in a downdraft blow chambar. Tka material is being taken off hare on tha bait conveyor to make granulated wool. October, 1949 MTC 017192 73 Below thf shale there is another 10-ft. layer of litne rock and then about 8 ft. of natural rement rock. The various strata arc worked and loaded separately in order to avoid contamination. Carney's Golden Fleece trade name is based on the unusual golden-pink color imparted to the batts by the blending of shale from the company's own quarry. Shale for rock wool production is stockpiled at the quarry and trucked to the plant as needed. Except in the production of indus trial batts, the quantity of shale used is actually quite small - about 1 part of shale to 5 parts of slag. In addi tion to imparting color to the wool, the shale effects a definite improve ment in the quality of the fibers. However, the company has pro duced top quality mineral wool without using any shale. For mak ing industrial batts the practice is to blend shale and slag in about equal proportions in order to increase the density of the wool somewhat. When this practice is followed the finished product weighs 4'/2 to 3 lbs. per cu. ft. The materials arc proportioned by weight at one end of the wool plant. Two mono-rail buckets are charged from either side of a material hopper at ground level, weighed on Fairbanks-Morse platform scales, and elevated on inclined mono-rails to the cupola charging floor. A batch consists of about 1,000 lbs. of 1 /%~ to 2-in. slag. 200 lbs. of shale and 200 lbs. of coke. A switching ar rangement on the .barging floor permits each mono-rail bucket to serve two cupolas. In an 8-hr. pe riod about thirty 1,200-lb. charges are fed to each cupola. The three older cupolas are 30 in. in diam eter; the newest, designated as No. 4, measures 38 in. All four units are about 20 ft. high. The melt is carried out at tem peratures of around 2,700 degrees F., and the moltrn rock is discharged continuously through nozzles at the base of the cupolas. Fillers arc pro duced by blasting the molten slag with steam as it flows from the' cupolas. With the exception of No. 3. each of the units has six jets. Waterproofing materials, oils (to make the product easier to handle and to reduce dust), and asphalticbinders (for batts only) are intro duced at the steam jets. These ma terials are stored and mixed in a. separate building adjacent to the main plant. The force of the steam blast car ries the fibers into blow chambers, Above: A view of the primary jaw crusher at the stone plant. Below: Slag, shaio and cote for the rock wool plant are batched in mono-rail buckets at this weigh station adjacent to the plant building. 74 MTC 017193 PIt and Quarry I i I October, 1949 where tiles settle onto .1 moving (hnin bolt oonvoyor. All four blow chambers arc about 90 ft. long bv 20 ft. high: on the hatt lines they are 10.0 in wide, as against 40 in. on the two lines ..hieh turn out granulated wool. Each chamber has a down draft to hasten the settling of the fibers. From the blow chambers the wool fibers pass into annealing furnaces which are about 22 ft. long. Here the binders are set at temperatures ranging front 330 to 400 deg. F. From this point the loose wool drops onto a belt conveyor and is fed to a granulator in which the material is shredded and beaten into granules of the desired size. Shot is removed by passing the granulated wool through a 7-ft. diameter hv 20-ft. rotary screen with J.g-in openings. The finished granules are packed in Lift: Till cupola! ara charged through doors in th# tops. Buckits run in on mono* rail and art discharged. lb-lb. Multiwall bags. In hatt production the wool blanket is split into six strips by cir cular knives, and vapor-seal paper is applied to one surface. At the end ol the production line a circular knife operating on a cross carriage automatically cuts the strips into batts of the required length. The batts are packed in cardboard car tons for shipment. The newest of Carney's several producing plants at Mankato is the crushing plant, which went into op eration in November 1943 and was described in detail in the Januarv 1946 issue of Pit and Quarry. Prior to that time the company had quarried stone for its own needs alone. After the rock was blasted out, it was broken by hand into ap proximately 4- by 6-in. pieces, and loaded (by the same means) into stone gondolas which were hoisted to the top of the quarry by means of a derrick. Twenty men were kept busy just in the breaking operation, and the total number employed in preparing raw stone for the various processing units was closer to 30. At present the quarry and the crush ing plant (which produces stone for commercial purposes as well as for the various processing units) em ploy only 13 men. At the crushing plant the quarry trucks dump from a ramp into a apron feeder ahead of a Ccdarrapids jaw crusher set at 8 in. Plus 3-in. stone is scalped off on a Cedarapids (Continued on page_Vd\. Lift: Moltin slag from the cupola i> divided into six streams, and blastid with live steam to form fibers. Below: A general view of one of the baft lines, showing the annealing furnaces at the left. I I 75 \ Courtesy of aanford-Day Iron Wks. Fig. 12. Details of the Saeford-Day floater ball bearing mine car wheel. hearings are lubricated according to the type of bearing. Gears, in turn, require the use of specially prepared gear lubricant of sufficient body or consistency to en able it to adhere tenaciously to the gear teeth and overcome vibration and wear. Where gears are enclosed in oil-tight housings, a light bodied lubricant may be used to advantage, in order to assure reduction in drag and power consumption. WIRE ROPE ON MINE HOISTS The mine hoist became more and more important as deeper shafts and the working of lower levels was adopted. Some of these operations require thousands of feet of wire rope, comparable to elevator service in a modern office building, although quite naturally the service is much more rugged due to possible contact with water, acids, dirt and falling rock. Effective lubrication insures against premature wear, it retards corrosion and prolongs the life of the rope. To perform these functions most effec tively the lubricant must not only prevent friction between the strands which comprise the rope, especially when the latter is bent in passing over sheaves or hoisting drums, but also it must prevent entry of water, acids or dirt which would cause corrosion or abrasion. Lubricant A wire rope lubri- Characteristies cant must pene trate between the strands and yet stick tenaciously to the contact surfaces. In addition to these properties, the product must not cake, gum or ball-up if contam inated with an excess of dust, dirt, October, 1948 or metallic particles. It must also be retained on the strands even at high temperature; this directly in volves the nature of the lubricant as well as relative fluidity. Viscosity, while important from the standpoint of ease of application, should not he regarded as an indication of lubri cating ability; penetration and ad hesiveness are far more important. The viscosity of a wire rope lubri cant for mine service will range gen erally from 500 to 1200 seconds Sayboldt LAtiversal at 210 degrees F., according to the operating tempera ture and the intensity of the moist ure conditions. The heavier grades are preferred for warm conditions where there might be possibility of a lighter lubricant thinning down to the extent of dripping off. Converse ly, under relatively cold conditions, a lighter lubricant should be used. Application High viscosity or of Wire Rapa semi-fluid wire rope Lubricants lubricants, by virtue of their inertness should be applied in heated condi tion. Merely to daub or paint a rope Carney Co. Expands (From page 75) vibrating screen and loaded into cars for the cement plant. Minus 3-in. is conveyed to a 36- by 42-in. Dixie pulverizer for processing into agricultural limestone, or it can be routed to a Diamond Model 65 port able plant for processing into various sizes of road stone. This plant, which incorporates a 10- by 36-in. jaw crusher, is driven by a 120-hp. Buda diesel engine. The agstone and road stone products are dropped into a pit and reclaimed with a 2-yd. stiff-leg clamshell. The Lundien Construction Co. of Mankato has the contract for secondary crushing and hauling. Two Baughman spreaders are used for agstone de liveries. The original unit of Carney in dustries, a plant for the manufac ture of hydraulic cement, was es tablished in 1883 by P. H. Carney, pioneer Mankato industrialist. His von. Harry E. Carney Sr., as execu tive head of the company, developed and expanded the enterprises until his death in 1938. Harry E. Carney Jr., grandson of the founder, is now president of the company. He is also head of the recently organized Carney-Pacific Rockwool Company, which operates a new $250,000 mineral wool plant at I.ongview, Wash. This plant just recently got into production. Siinpvon Indus tries, the selling division of the Simp son Logging Co., has the exclusive with such a product at normal tem peratures would be relatively ineffec tual. Even though the surface might be more or less coated, the possibility of penetration occurring to any ex tent would be remote. This latter is the secret of effective wire rope lu brication. CONCLUSION This discussion of mechanized mining and the lubrication of the machinery involved is presented to emphasize the relation of lubrication to power consumption and depend able production. Obviously, an or ganized lubrication procedure, where the lubrication engineer is the pre dominating factor, is the bavis. The machinery involved is costly and many of the parts are precision built. The output of the mine depends upon synchronized operation of all this machinery with production-line efficiency. The lubrication engineer assures of this by advising in the selection of lubricants and by seeing that they are properly protected in storage and carefully applied. sales agency for Carney-Pacific Rockwool. Carney has completed within the past year a major expansion and improvement program involving the cement milt at Mankato. The con struction of three additional lime processing silos has doubled capac ity by making it possible to operate existing grinding equipment 14 to 16 hrs. per day, as against 8 for merly. The silos are of concrete stave construction and each has a capacity of 2,00ft bbls. During the shutdown the company also installed new coal-handling hoppers, repaired stone gondolas, relined and repaired its kilns, and overhauled all major mill equipment. These improve ments have increased output of all cement products to about 2,00ft bbls. per day. On capacity operations Carney employs about 145 men at Mankato, including 15 in the quarry and stone plant. 35 at the cement plant, and the remainder in the rock wool di vision. Only the rock wool plant operates on a 3-shift basis. Expenditure un American eonirntmaking mathinery valued at nearly $3,200,000 was recenth defended l>y Prime Minister Joseph B. ChiHev of Australia. He told the House of Representatives that the government always gave earn est consideration to applications to buy machinery that would ultimately save dollars. MTC 017195 79