Patent ID: 6857705

Claim:
A mining machine comprising: a shearing head mounted on a moveable carriage, said shearing head being for mining product from a scam as said moveable carriage traverses from aide-to-side across a mining face of said seam on rail means which extend from side-to-side across the seam at least 2D co-ordinate position determining means carried entirely by one of the movable carriage and the rail means for determining the absolute co-ordinate position in space of one the movable carriage and the rail means at each of a plurality of locations along the rail means, said position determining means providing current absolute co-ordinate position outputdata signals therefrom; processing means connected to receive the output data signals and to generate and to generated further signals to control rail moving means associated with said machine, so said rail moving means will attempt to displace a trailing part of said rail means a distance towards said seam based on the determined current absolute co-ordinate position of that part of the rail means as distinct from an expected co-ordinate position, to assume a co-ordinate position of an intended profile for the next pass, said processing means operating with said rail moving means at various locations along the length of the rail means, so that on the next pass of said moveable carriage, said shearing head will attempt to cut to the intended profile.