Materials Science Forum Submitted: 2019-04-24

ISSN: 1662-9752, Vol. 983, pp 73-80 Accepted: 2019-07-31

doi:10.4028/www.scientific.net/MSF.983.73 Online: 2020-03-27
© 2020 Trans Tech Publications Ltd, Switzerland

A Quantitative Analysis of Mine Mills by 3D Laser Scanner

Hideki Kuma1,a, Hisao Fukuoka2,b*, Misuzu Komatsu3
1
National Institute of Technology, Matsue College, 14-4 Nishi-Ikuma, Matsue-City, Japan
2
Tokyo Denki University, 5 Senju-Asahi-Cho, Adachi Ward, Tokyo, Japan
3
The Yu-no-oku Museum of Gold Mining History, 1787 Kaminodaira, Minobu-Cho, Minami Kuma
County, Yamanashi Prefecture, Japan
a
kuma@matsue-ct.jp, bfukuoka@mail.dendai.ac.jp

Keywords: Mine Mills, Laser Scanner, Yu-no-oku Gold Mine, Center of Gravity, Shape Feature
Values

Abstract. This research proposes a novel method of recording the features of mine mills digitally by
3D laser scanner and its application. This method enables to obtain their shape features in short time
independent of the expert's drawing skill. It also enables to evaluate the shape feature values, such as
the position of the center of gravity, based on the obtained 3D digital data. In addition it may be
possible to get a clue to clarify the process of varying the shape of mine mills. The mine mills
described in this paper are remains discovered in the mountains of Yu-no-oku gold mine locating in
Minami Kuma County in Yamanashi prefecture, Japan.

Introduction
We can find a number of mine mills around a mining area. The mine mill is a tool to grind the ore
mined into powder. The features of mine mills, such as its shape and the position of ore charging port,
are varying depending on the time and place they were used. When we record the mine mill, one
method is to draw its pictures by expert's hand as shown in Fig. 1 [1, 2]. This method leads to the
difference of the precision for representing their features depending on the skill of the experts. In this
method, the third angle projection system is often used to record and represent their three dimensional
features, but its observability is limited. In addition, it takes several hours for even the experts to draw
a single mine mill.
Another method is to take photos of mine mills along with a scale by a digital camera. Although
it is an efficient method, its three dimensional observability is also limited due to the inherent two
dimensional nature of photos. As far as we have investigated we could not find any effort for
evaluating the shape feature values, such as the position of the center of gravity based on the obtained
digital photo data.
This research proposes a novel method of recording the features of mine mills digitally by 3D
laser scanner and its application. This method enables to obtain their shape features in short time
without the expert's drawing skill. It also enables to evaluate the shape feature values, such as the
position of the center of gravity, based on the obtained 3D digital data. In addition it may be possible
to get a clue to clarify the process of varying the shape of mine mills. The mine mills described in
this paper are the remains discovered in the mountains of Yu-no-oku Gold Mine locating in Minami
Kuma County in Yamanashi Prefecture, Japan. Most of these mine mills are owned by the Yu-no-
oku Museum of Gold Mining History. Because the places where they were discovered are precisely
recorded, we believe that we can easily make comparison and examination of the results of
measurement for them.

All rights reserved. No part of contents of this paper may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without the written permission of Trans
Tech Publications Ltd, www.scientific.net. (#540690269, University College London UCL, London, United Kingdom-04/07/20,13:08:11)
74 Archaeometallurgy

Fig. 1 Sketches of mine mills

Typical Types of Mine Mills

The mine mills owned by the Yu-no-oku Museum of Gold Mining History are classified into three
shape categories: Yu-no-oku-type, Kurokawa-type and Rynd-type as shown in Fig. 2 [3, 4, 5]. The
Yu-no-oku-type mine mill has its ore charging port off the center of the mine mill, but its bearing
hole is near the center. This type is considered to be inefficient because the grinding surface only
spreads between the charging port and the outer periphery of the mill stone. It means that about the
half of the bottom surface of the upper mill stone is utilized to grind the ore into powder. The
Kurokawa type (a.k.a. Standard type) mill has its charging port at the center of the mill stone. Since
the grinding surface becomes the entire bottom surface of the upper mill stone, it can be efficient.
However, rotating the upper mill stone may cause instability because the bearing hole does not
necessarily agree with the center of the mill stone. The rynd-type has a wooden connecting instrument
at the center of the charging port. This instrument is called a rynd. This type is also efficient because
the entire bottom surface of the upper mill stone can be the grinding surface similarly to the
Kurokawa-type. In addition, since the rynd has a small bearing hole at the center of itself and it almost
agrees with the center of the mill stone, it could help stabilize the rotation of the upper mill stone.
The rynd-type mime mills have been excavated from all over Japan, but their production era is not
clear. One theory claims that the type of mine mill has varied from the Yu-no-oku-type to the
Kurokawa-type to the rynd-type. In addition, the reason for the changing of these types is not clarified
so far.
 Materials Science Forum Vol. 983 75

Fig.2 Three types of mine mills

Measurement Equipment
We used a three-dimensional (3D) laser scanner to perform the measurement of the mine mills in
this research as shown in Fig. 3. This scanner has a mirror at the center of it, and the mirror bends the
laser ray in the vertical direction. The scanner can perform the measurement in the range of 305 deg.
vertically. Since the scanner itself rotates 360 deg. horizontally during the measurement, it can
perform the wide range 3D measurement in all directions. The range of the measurement is set by 30
deg. The scanner calculates the distance between the reflection point of the emitted laser ray and
itself based on the traveling time of laser ray, and produces the 3D point-cloud data. It weighs only 5
kg, and it is easy for us to carry it to the measurement field where target mine mills are often buried
in the remains of mine.

Fig. 3 Measurement equipment

76 Archaeometallurgy

Measurement Method
Producing 3D Point-cloud. When measuring the shape of a mine mill, we have to measure the
surface of the mill including its grinding surface and obtain the 3D point-cloud appearing to be
floating in the air. Fig. 4 shows an example of the measurement procedure. Putting the mill A side
up, we measured the mill from four directions (Fig. 4(a)). It took about three minutes to obtain the
3D point-cloud per direction.

(a) Measurement for A side up (b) Measurement for A side down

Fig. 4 Measurement method

The resulting four sets of 3D point-cloud were overlaid on PC by the dedicated software SCENE
(FARO Inc.). Fig. 5 shows the result of overlaying. This stage of data included unnecessary portion
such as the data for the floor and so on. We use the dedicated software Geomagic Design X (3D
Systems Inc.) to eliminate such unnecessary data. Fig. 6 shows the data after this elimination. In order
to obtain the shape data for the portion in contact with the floor, we next put the mill A side down
and performed the same measurement mentioned above again (Fig. 4(b)). As the result, we obtained
two sets of "cut-out" 3D point-cloud data and overlaid these two. Fig. 7(c) shows the final overlaid
3D point-cloud along with the photo (Fig. 7(a)) and the sketch (Fig. 7(b)) of the corresponding mine
mill respectively. We can see that the shape features of the 3D point-cloud match the ones of the
photo and the sketch. Fig. 8 shows some dimensions obtained from the 3D point-cloud. We can
measure the dimension of any portion of the mill in millimeter from the 3D point-cloud. We applied
this measurement method to four Yu-no-oku-type mills and three rynd-type mills. Fig. 9 shows the
distribution of the average diameters of the measured mill stones. The average diameters of the Yu-
no-oku-type mill stones are almost the same 400 mm. The average diameters of the rynd-type mill
stones varies from 300 mm to 600 mm. Fig. 10 shows the distribution of the average diameter of the
ore charging port. For both types, these diameters are classified into two groups: about 50 mm and
about 70 mm.
Calculation of the Center of Gravity. In order to obtain the center of gravity position from 3D point-
cloud, we set the coordinate origin at the center of the bearing hole for Yu-no-oku-type mills. For
rynd-type mills, we set the coordinate origin at the center of the rynd. The dedicated software
Geomagic Design can calculate the coordinate of the center of gravity relative to the origin mentioned
above. In this calculation we assume that the density of the mill is uniform. We obtained the
coordinates of the center of gravity for four Yu-no-oku-type mills and three rynd-type ones. Fig. 11
shows the two of them, one for the Yu-no-oku-type and the other for the rynd-type.
 Materials Science Forum Vol. 983 77

Fig. 5 3D point-cloud with unnecessary portion Fig.6 Cut-out 3D point-cloud

Fig.7 Comparison among photos, sketches and 3D point-clouds

Discussion
We have calculated the distance between the center of gravity and the center of bearing hole for
each mine mill. Each distance is less than about 20 mm for both the Yu-no-oku-type and the rynd-
type as shown in Fig. 11. Considering that the average diameter of bearing holes is about 40 mm for
the Yu-no-oku-type and is about 75 mm for the rynd-type, we can conclude that a mine mill generally
has its center of gravity inside its bearing hole.
Focusing on the thickness of a mill stone, we can see that the rynd-type has rather even thickness.
On the contrary, the thickness of the Yu-no-oku-type mill stone has different property. The thickness
of the ore charging port side is larger than the opposite side as shown in Fig. 8(a) and Fig. 8(b). In
general it is easy to rotate a mill stone if the center of bearing hole agrees with the center of gravity.
We can guess that the thickness of the ore charging port side was made larger in order to compensate
the weight lost by drilling the charging port. As for the rynd-type, its manufacturing process is
78 Archaeometallurgy

considered simpler because the center of bearing port agrees with the center of gravity. It consists of
only cutting out 500 mm outer diameter and drilling about 80 mm ore charging port.

(a) Yu-no-oku-type (b) Rynd-type

Fig.8 Dimensions obtained from 3D point-clouds

Fig. 9 Distribution of mill

diameters

Fig. 10 Distribution of charging

port diameters
 Materials Science Forum Vol. 983 79

(a) Yu-no-oku-type (b) Rynd-type

Fig. 11 The center of gravity obtained from 3D point-cloud

Fig. 12 Distance between the center of gravity and the center of bearing hole

Summary
This research has established a novel method of measuring the shape features of mine mills in
digital form by utilizing 3D laser scanner. During the development of this method, we have confirmed
the followings.
(1) Eight directional measurement.
In order to scan all surfaces of the mill, we have confirmed that it is necessary to perform the
measurement from at least eight directions.
80 Archaeometallurgy

(2) Time of measurement.

It takes about 30 minutes to perform 8 directional measurement, about 30 minutes to produce 3D
point-cloud data and about 5 minutes to calculate the shape feature values including the center of
gravity. This result shows that even non-experts can record the shape features of mine mills digitally
within half of the time required for previous method.
(3) Distance between the center of bearing hole and the center of gravity.
For both the Yu-no-oku-type and the rynd-type, the distance between the center of bearing hole
and the center of gravity is less than 20 mm. Rotating a mill stone needs more power unless its center
of bearing hole agrees with its center of gravity. As for the Yu-no-oku-type, we suppose that making
these centers match was achieved by eliminating some partial weight from the mill stone. However,
the elimination of an appropriate amount of weight should require very careful works and it has a
certain limitation. We presume that the rynd-type was developed instead of the Yu-no-oku-type to
minimize the difference of these centers. We believe that the shape of mine mills has been varied so
as to make them easy to be manufactured. The rynd-type is considered comparatively easier to be
manufactured than the Yu-no-oku type. It could be the reason why accordingly the rynd-type mine
mills have been widely spread all over Japan.
One of the future directions for the research is to calculate the shape feature values for partially
broken mine mills and partially buried ones. Directly applying the measurement method mentioned
above to these mills leads to deficit 3D point-cloud data. Some database of the shape feature values
for mine mills remaining in rather perfect condition may help estimate the shape feature values of
these imperfect mine mills. We believe that the database must contain such data as the shape and the
depth of handle groove and distribution groove on the grinding surface.

Acknowledgment
This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 25350398.

References
[1] M. Hagiwara, Nippon no Kin-Ginzan Iseki (Remains of Gold and Silver Mine in Japan) (Jpn.),
Koshi Shoin, Tokyo, 2013.
[2] Yu-no-oku Kinzan Iseki Gakujutsu Chousa-Kai, Yu-no-oku Kinzan Iseki no Kenkyu (A
Research on Remains of Yu-no-oku Gold Mine) (Jpn.), Yu-no-oku Kinzan Iseki Gakujutsu Chousa
Dan, 1992.
[3] K. Taniguchi, Takeda Gundan wo Sasaeta Koshu-Kin/Yu-no-oku Kinzan (Koshu Gold and Yu-
no-oku Gold Mine Supported Takeda Warriors) (Jpn.), Shinsensha, Tokyo, 2007.
[4] M. Hagiwara, Sengoku Daimyo Takeda-shi to Kai no Chuusei (Warring Lord Takeda Family
and Kai Region in the Medieval History of Japan) (Jpn.), pp.220-232, Iwata Shoin, Tokyo, 2011.
[5] K. Imamura, Mine Mills and Precious Metal Technology of the Muromachi to Tokugawa Periods
(Jpn.), Bulletin of the Department of Archaeology, the University of Tokyo, No.9, pp.25-73, 1990.