Continuous Miners Kentucky Coal Education
Continuous Miners. A machine with a large rotating steel drum equipped with tungsten carbide teeth that scrape coal from the seam. Operating in a "room and pillar" system – where the mine is divided into a series of 20to30 foot "rooms" or work areas cut into the coalbed – it can mine as much as five tons of coal a minute – more than a miner of the 1920s would produce in an ...