Arthur Wilfley

Arthur Redman Wilfley (April 29, 1860 – February 20, 1927) was a mining engineer and inventor who worked much of his life in Colorado, in the United States.

Wilfley invented the Wilfley table, an oscillating mineral separation table that concentrated heavy ore minerals via a series of longitudinal riffles. The Wilfley Table was a design used world-wide due to the fact it significantly increased the recovery of silver, gold and other precious metals. Wilfley then turned his attention to centrifugal pumps knowing the market for a device that could handle heavy tailings at many mills was greatly sought. This concept gave rise to a unique centrifugal seal and the subsequent birth of the Wilfley Packingless Pump. Like the Wilfley Table, the Wilfley Pump gained international recognition for it reliability in handling sands, slurries, and limes. It would form the basis for the creation of Wilfley's company, A. R. Wilfley and Sons, Inc.

Early life Arthur Wilfley was born on April 29, 1860, in Maryville, Missouri, United States, the son of an unsuccessful forty-niner.

Though he possessed little formal education, he took work as an assistant mineral surveyor to help pay for his grade-school education, learning assaying from a chemist and studying books on mining engineering in his evenings. proved successful in 1892, until the issues with zinc and falling silver prices set-in within a year. Concentrating table Wilfley tables from the Kennecott Copper Corporation, on Copper River and Northwestern Railroad, Kennicott, Valdez-Cordova Census Area, Alaska. July 1985 Tireless in his efforts to make the extraction of silver more economical, Wilfley continued to work on a new type of concentrator. Rather than using heat such as the Austin process, Wilfley had instead been experimenting for some time on mineral separation by use mineral density contrasts. the Wilfley Table made mining lower-grade ores profitable. Pulverised ore, suspended in a water solution, was washed across a sloping riffled vibrating table so that metals separated as they drained off. knowing that dealing with heavy tailings was a considerable problem at many mills. With his son, Wilfley developed a centrifugal pump to transfer heavy, often abrasive slurries, with the ability to withstand corrosive solutions. in conjunction with the table he invented. This would become another internationally successful invention and the crowning accomplishment of his inventive career.