Mystery rod shuffling machine - GIF

[Jon]

Mystery (at least to me), labeled "rod shuffling machine". Anyone?

[olderdan]

It would seem to me not so much shuffling as separately transporting to another stage of processing in a controlled manner.

[mklotz]

It could be an artifact of Chinese-to-English translation. Whatever the Chinese verb was, it was translated into "shuffling" in the connotation of "moving forward in very small steps".

[jcorpx]

Sorry guys, close but no cigar. This is a walking beam conveyor. In this case used at the end of a rod rolling mill. The rod would come out red hot and pliable and be gradually air cooled on the walking beam conveyor until gray (cold). Every rod mill usually uses them when straight rod is required. e.g., rebar mills.

[wizard69]

Jcorpx has it. If you look real closely you can see a new rod enter the buffer once every cycle. I say buffer because on a smaller scale I’ve seen similar mechanisms used to buffer product from one state to the next.

[owen moore]

Same mechanism used in hot work conveyors and even some hay balers. I designed one years ago for a transport conveyor in a cafeteria that would move any kind of dish, plate, or glass from point A to point B. My walking beams were smooth instead of saw tooth in design. The one pictured appears to be powered in a true rotary fashion. I used a rectilinear motion for a short lift, but more travel per stroke.

[Philip Davies]

Anybody else suffering from motion sickness?

[CharlesWaugh]

The same process is used in a local steel mill to move multiple 10,000 pound blocks of steel through the furnace prior to being rolled into plate stock.
The hydraulic cylinders that run the 'floor' are 3' in diameter and run at 4200PSI.

[Toolmaker51]

Agreed, walking conveyor is most likely. Infeed of bar stock defines it; though my first impulse was handling bar during manufacture of cat walk flooring. Excess length was a vote against it.

[Metallurg33]

Looks like a walking cooling bed in a rebar mill.