Development of Flotation Machine Impeller on the Basis of Additive Technologies

The constant increase in the consumption of ferrous, non-ferrous, precious and rare metals in the national economy requires an increase in the efficiency of minerals mining and processing. One of the main methods of enrichment used in the technological process of processing various ores is foam flotation. The authors provide a brief description of this process and analysis of various designs of flotation machines. The article is devoted to the modernization of the aeration unit of flotation machines with the “RIF” design. It is noted that the design of such machines effectively uses the modular principle of assembly aggregates, which allows one to upgrade individual unit, increasing the efficiency of the machine as a whole. The main part of this unit is an impeller—the most complex and fast—wearing part. The paper analyzes various designs of impellers and their manufacturing technologies. In the existing designs of flotation machines, the impellers are made of steel. It is proposed to replace this material with polyurethane, which has become widely used as a structural material due to the emergence of additive technologies in the production of various parts. This material has a relatively low cost and has an increased resistance to wear. The article formulates the main requirements for the most important operations of the technological process of impeller manufacturing. For this purpose, a 3D model of the upgraded impeller design was developed in the SolidWorks 3D computer-aided design system. The authors propose an additive technology for layer-by-layer production of an impeller on a 3D printer using the Ultimaker Cura slicer program. For the manufacturing of the proposed design of the impeller made of polyurethane, the production technology was developed by the method of layer-by-layer deposition method of Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM).