Stacker

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A stacker is a very large machine used in bulk material handling applications. A stacker's function is to stack bulk material such as ores and cereals onto a stockpile. A reclaimer is used to recover the material.

Stackers are rated in tph (tonnes per hour) for capacity and normally travel on a rail between stockpiles in the stockyard. A stacker can move in three directions typically - horizontally along the rail - vertically by "luffing" its boom and rotationally by slewing its boom.

Stackers can stack into different patterns; cone and chevron being two examples.

Stackers and Reclaimers were originally manually controlled manned machines with no remote control - typically today they are fully automated with their parameters (for stacking or reclaiming) remotely set however some older reclaimers may still be manually controlled as reclaiming is far more difficult to automate than stacking - the reason for this being the detection of pile edges has been difficult to automate in different environmental conditions with differing bulk materials.

The controlling system used is typically a PLC (programmable logic controller) with an HMI (human-machine interface) for display connected to a central control system.

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