Ningxia city buries its coal mining past for industries of the future

Symbols of change

In the center of Ningxia Wear Casting Co's exhibition hall, a large high-speed railway sleeper is a potent reminder of successful technological innovation.

The sleeper has stringent requirements for structural strength, mechanical performance and manufacturing technology.

"The machining precision requires that the dimensions of several key components are within a range of 5 micrometers, which is one-tenth the diameter of a human hair," said Wang Xiaoning, the company's chairman.

Technology to achieve this level of accuracy was previously dominated by foreign companies, but domestically made sleepers can do the same tasks and also provide large cost savings, he said.

The company's sleeper beams are used for various models of high-speed and bullet trains. It's currently developing sleeper beams for high-speed trains with a speed of 450 kilometers per hour. Once key technological breakthroughs are made, they can also provide support for increased speeds of domestically produced bullet trains.

In March last year, another innovation was introduced by Weir Casting — a one-piece die-cast aluminum alloy battery tray for new energy vehicles. The new tray met structural requirements for being lightweight and robust and did away with the previous manufacturing process, which required multiple welding points for component casting. This technology can be tailored according to the manufacturing requirements of various NEVs, the company said.

Weir Casting's industrial output value reached 140 million yuan last year.

Ningxia Tiandi Benniu Industrial Group Co, a large coal mining equipment producer, is also producing technological innovations and provides heavy-duty scraper conveyors for about 30 percent of the country's coal mines.

Liu Qinghua, deputy general manager of the company, said its ultralong working face intelligent scraper conveyor equipment had reached international advanced level.

A complete set of the equipment can automatically control the conveyor's operating speed based on the amount of materials being moved.

The company is establishing two digital production manufacturing bases in Yinchuan, the regional capital, and Shizuishan. It has also set up a research and development center in Xi'an, Shaanxi province, and integrated technologies such as artificial intelligence and virtual reality into intelligent mines to achieve unmanned mining.