In the smelting site of the Yunnan Gold Silver Workshop, you will see that automatic forklifts and robotic arms perform their respective duties and operate in an orderly manner. Nine silver smelting processes can be completed through the programming of a CNC system. And this set of intelligent equipment is from the fully automated refining workshop of Darnal Intelligence Group, which was successfully rolled off in 2023.

Darnal Intelligence Group was founded in 2004, settled in Jinxia Economic Development Zone, Changsha in 2019 and began to enter the smart smelting market of precious metals. 

Jiang Mingming, technical director of Darnal Intelligence was the only founder who joined the company with technology at that time. Jiang Mingming said: “At that time, we were ‘nobody’ in the industry, and it was common for us to seek cooperation with other companines with solutions and products.”

In 2019, Darnal Intelligence received its first order—a smart production line for Zhaojin Gold & Silver Refinery. The biggest challenge for this production line at that time was automated polishing. 

“Due to the fast speed, and high efficiency of manual polishing, how to accurately and effectively polish by a machine arm was the first challenge we had to overcome at that time.” 

Jiang Mingming introduced that after more than half a year of research and development, the team used a hard polishing head for silver brick polishing based on the principle of mobile phone polishing equipment. At the same time, the spring structure was used to replace manual operations with a mechanical arm. 

After hundreds of experiments, the polishing force, accuracy, and precision have been adjusted to achieve intelligent polishing. Although the polishing efficiency may not temporarily comparable to that of manual operations, its polishing quality is superior.

After 8 months of efforts, the R&D team overcame numerous technical difficulties and achieved breakthroughs in multiple technologies. In July 2022, the first silver refining intelligent production line independently developed by Darnal Intelligence was successfully launched. 

It makes the originally cumbersome and laborious process easy, simple, safe, and efficient. The polishing robot was the first intelligent equipment for precious metal smelting and polishing in China at that time.

In 2023, the efficiency of the polishing robot was upgraded, from the original 12 polishing pieces per hour to 24 polishing pieces per hour.

“How to make products with better quality and higher performance? Every generation of products needs to have a qualitative leap compared to the previous generation to meet customer needs.”

In 2023, the fully automated intelligent refining production workshop was set up, which is the result of Darnal Intelligence’s continuous improvement.

Jiang Mingming said that only R&D personnel are most aware of the difficulty and challenge of each qualitative leap, and each production upgrading embodies the wisdom and sweat of team members.

In this equipment development and manufacturing, Jiang Mingming has been thinking about how to replace manual sampling. 

“The workers on the production line wearing protective equipment for silver anode plate casting not only have high work intensity but also cannot fully protect their bodies. This is the pain point of artificial smelting factories, and I want to solve this problem through technology.”

“Because there are no products for us to refer to, we can only rely on our experience accumulation and innovation.” With the joint efforts of Jiang Mingming and the research and development backbones, the original anode plate was launched, which not only liberates both hands, but also eliminates the damage caused by harmful gases to workers.

“We have made breakthroughs in the field of precious metal refining.” Looking back on our past struggles, Jiang Mingming said that he remembers every change and important moment on the research and development path very clearly. 

Intelligent products are constantly updated and iterated. In the future, to become a leader in this field, Darnal Intelligence still needs to keep making breakthroughs in product technology research and development.