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| Frue vanner | |
|---|---|
| Name | Frue vanner |
| Type | Concentration machine |
| Invented | 1870s |
| Inventor | Edwin Frue |
| Country | United States |
| Used | 19th–20th century |
| Fuel | Steam, electric |
Frue vanner.
The Frue vanner is a mechanical ore dressing machine developed in the late 19th century for concentrating sulfide ores and tin-bearing alluvial material. It operated as a shaking, inclined, continuous-feed sluice that separated heavy mineral particles from gangue using motion, riffles, and washing water. The device influenced mineral processing practices across mining districts in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, South Africa, and Chile.
The Frue vanner, patented by Edwin W. Frue in the 1870s, became a standard piece of equipment in metallurgical workshops, stamping its place alongside technologies such as the jig (mineral processing), Buddle, sluice box, spiral concentrator, centrifugal concentrator, and Shaker table. It is frequently discussed in connection with industrial sites like the Cornish tin mines, the Californian Gold Rush, the Klondike Gold Rush, the Johannesburg reef ores, and the Broken Hill silver-lead-zinc operations. Contemporary texts compared it with devices by inventors such as William Boddington, John Taylor, and E. G. Hancock.
A typical Frue vanner consisted of a continuous belt of carpet or canvas mounted on an inclined, oscillating frame driven by a crank and eccentric linked to a steam engine or electric motor; similar drive arrangements were used on the stamp mill and concentrating table. The operating principle exploited differential motion, water flow, and specific gravity to stratify particles, akin to the action of the Wilfley table and the MacArthur-Forrest process in beneficiation. Key components—headbox, feed launder, concentrating surface, discharge lip—mirror elements found in the sluice and vortex concentrator families. Operators adjusted stroke, slope, and wash water rates during processing of ores from deposits such as lode, placer, and vein occurrences.
Edwin Frue’s work drew on earlier innovations in European and American ore dressing practice, building on research from figures like Carl Friedrich Brückner and institutions such as the Royal School of Mines and the U.S. Geological Survey. Adoption accelerated during ore booms in Cornwall, Colorado, Nevada, and Tasmania where demand for efficient tin, gold, and silver concentration rose. Manufacturers in industrial centers including Pittsburgh, Leeds, Glasgow, and Melbourne produced machines for export to mining frontiers such as Peru, Bolivia, and Nevada City. Over its service life, refinements paralleled advances in power sources from steam engine plants to electric motor drives and integration with crushing and grinding stages like the Ball mill and roll crusher.
Frue vanners were deployed in mills treating complex sulfide ores, tin-stream placers, and refractory gold ores; they were often paired with equipment like the crusher, grizzly, stamp battery, classifier, and froth flotation cells. Mining companies such as Homestake Mining Company, Consolidated Gold Fields, Rio Tinto Group, and regional operators in the Wabana iron ore district used vanners in gravity circuits before widespread flotation adoption. The machines served metallurgical works processing concentrates destined for smelters like Glencore and Compañía Minera Antofagasta, and were integrated into beneficiation flowsheets for commodities including tin, gold, silver, lead, and zinc marketed to firms such as Kennecott Copper Corporation.
Empirical studies and mill reports from institutions such as the Colorado School of Mines and the Imperial College London documented recoveries that varied with feed size, water rate, and operating skill; vanners commonly achieved favourable separation for coarse-to-medium particles while losing fine material below designed cut sizes. Comparative assessments placed the Frue vanner between manual sluices and modern centrifugal concentrators for throughput and grade, with operational limitations against ultrafine liberation where methods like flotation or cyanidation proved superior. Performance also depended on ore mineralogy—sulfide-rich ores from regions like Broken Hill and Leadville responded differently from cassiterite-bearing placers in Cornwall and Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape.
Surviving Frue vanners are preserved in mining museums and heritage sites including the National Mining Museum (Scotland), the California State Mining and Mineral Museum, the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery (Launceston), and heritage parks in Cornwall and Tasmania. Restorations are documented by organizations such as the Society for Industrial Archeology and the National Trust (England and Wales), and examples appear in collections with other historical machines like the beam engine, Cornish engine, and trommel. Academic collections at the Smithsonian Institution and the Natural History Museum, London include archival drawings and mill records, while regional archives in Nevada, Colorado, South Australia, and Chile hold operational logs and purchase ledgers that illuminate the machine’s industrial footprint.
Category:Ore dressing Category:Mining equipment Category:Industrial heritage