If you are a rock, sand, gravel, or mineral processing industry veteran or an avid reader of our blog, you know that there are several different types and styles of crushing equipment. The exact crushers you need—jaw, cone, impact, or gyratory—will depend on your site, the product you’re making, and how much you need to produce.

An individual crusher’s construction and capabilities also dictate where in your processing operations it will fit. That is, you may have multiple types of crushers situated in primary, secondary, and tertiary stations in a circuit format to perform the necessary material reduction work. Each type of crusher brings unique strengths and benefits to the process.

Today’s post focuses on compression-style jaw crushers, which are most often employed in the primary stage of a crushing circuit. It’s important to know that cone crushers are sometimes used in their place, and we’ll also talk a little bit about when cone crushers may be preferred over jaw crushers.

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Material handling and sorting are enormous jobs that require the right equipment. Screening media exists to help several industries, including the mining industry and washing plants, with sorting, washing, and separating aggregates of all kinds to be appropriately classified and sold at the required size.

Choosing the right screening media for the job at hand can be challenging, and there are pros and cons for each type. At Kemper Equipment, we know it can be frustrating to decide if you’ve never really thought about the different options before or are looking to update your current equipment and aren’t sure where to start.

We want to help you maximize both productivity and profit for your operations, and we have put together this informational piece about rubber screening media so you can make the best decision for your business.

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When you manage quarry equipment, you know that eventually, you will have to either repair or replace something on the machines. This process doesn’t have to be frustrating, as you can plan for what will happen if you do have a breakdown to minimize any potential downtime.

At Kemper Equipment, we have a few tips on how to decide if you should repair or replace your equipment and the considerations you can make before you get to that point to help ease you into the decision.

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As a business, buying mineral processing equipment may be one of the most significant decisions you can make. The topic can come up when you build a new plant or hope to update existing equipment systems to be more productive. Perhaps you have purchased processing equipment in the past, but you want a refresher on what you should be looking for in high-quality machinery.

Regardless of your specific needs, Kemper Equipment can help. We have over three decades of experience helping businesses like yours purchase high-quality equipment for their mineral processing operations.

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When you run a mineral processing business, you want to reduce the cost of operations as much as possible to maximize profits. But how can you do that by adding more equipment to your production? Material screening equipment might very well be the solution you are looking for. At Kemper Equipment, we help businesses set up the most efficient and cost-effective systems to maximize profit and minimize downtime, and that often includes material screening equipment for a full circuit system.

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Conveyor systems can be an asset to any aggregate or mineral processing site, but it can be frustrating when you have an underperforming or broken system. Why wait until your conveyor system has broken down to learn about what options are available to update it?

At Kemper Equipment, we approach each conveyor system individually because they are unique to a site’s needs. Whether you are here with questions about a new conveyor for your business, updating an existing conveyor with our custom system designs, or conveyor components to fix a broken part, we can help.

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Do you need to process sand, gravel, minerals, rock, or other aggregate products and have not yet purchased or leased crushing equipment? There’s no question—you need to work with a capable and professional material handling equipment design and engineering company dedicated to selling, renting, and installing the best new crushers for your needs.

After all, our most recent Kemper Equipment success story illustrates what happens when an aggregate producer implements the wrong system design and material handling equipment!

However, if you’re new to the aggregate processing industry, you probably have a lot of questions about rock crushers. As foundational material handling equipment in all plants, crushers need to coordinate seamlessly with screens, conveyor systems, and washing equipment.

Today we’re breaking down everything you need to know about crushers to help you understand the questions you should ask as you search for the right material handling equipment for your operations.

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To the material handling equipment and systems experts like us here at Kemper Equipment, the simple question, “how should I design my conveyor system?” is not simple at all.

And our answer to that question is more like a request—tell us all about your operation, your production goals, and your project demands so that we can custom-design your ideal conveyor system. 

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Once upon a time, determining how much of a given material—aggregate, recycled asphalt, sand for concrete products, and more—was needed for a given project involved a lot of time-consuming manual math. Similarly, keeping track of regular maintenance needs for your various crushing, screening, conveyor, and wash equipment meant careful record-keeping within paper logs that were easily lost or damaged.

Luckily—as with most other areas of modern life—online resources and downloadable smartphone apps have made many of the inconvenient tracking and calculating tasks associated with quarrying and aggregate or mineral processing so much simpler and more accurate.

While it’s true that many apps are proprietary to individual manufacturers at the moment, the rapid digitization of the aggregate industry across the board means more generally useful resources are coming online all the time.

Today’s post shares a few of our favorite currently available resources that you should definitely check out if you haven’t already.

Vulcan Materials Co. Free Product Calculator

First announced in Pit & Quarry magazine way back in late 2012, Vulcan’s construction aggregate calculator has been refined and made more readily available to more users in the years since. It is both online at Vulcan’s website and can be downloaded as an Android and iPhone/iPad app.

This helpful resource allows users to enter material properties like width, length, and thickness to determine needed quantities for a particular job. Users can also estimate a material’s density by choosing from preset geology and product factors.

PSU’s Dirt, Gravel, and Low Volume Road (DGLVR) Materials Calculator

While this calculator has a very specific purpose—determining how much material may be needed for low volume road improvement projects within our home state of Pennsylvania—it also has a “custom material” selection option that allows users to specify the density and compaction ratio of material not in the list. This makes the free web-based calculator a bit more generally useful.

Check it out on Penn State’s Center for Dirt and Gravel Road Studies’ website.

Schenck Process vibe2know™ App

Released in 2017, this app allows operators to learn vital information about the performance of any vibrating machine—most commonly screening equipment—in their circuit.

The app requires a unique mount that users can insert their phone into, which attaches directly to the machinery. (This mount is free from Schenck Process.) Once connected, operators can get at-a-glance insight into data points like vibration amplitude, oscillating angle, and operating speed that help them assess the overall “health” of their equipment.

The U.S. Mine Safety & Health Administration’s (MSHA) Updated Mine Data Retrieval System (MDRS)

If you have been in the aggregate mining and processing industry for any length of time, you’ve discovered how important compliance with government regulations has become. And navigating the Mine Safety & Health Administration’s compliance assistance calculators and other resources has been somewhat challenging for users.

Fortunately, the MSHA just finished a major overhaul of its databases and online resources to enhance user experience and make more info and tools readily available to operators. As Pit & Quarry just reported in June 2019, the new MDRS is an “exclusive gateway to real-time data, posted prominently on msha.gov and available at msha.gov/mine-data-retrieval-system.”

Keeping American mine workers healthy and safe is a government priority, but it’s also an industry imperative, of course. With MSHA making it easier for everyone to accomplish this goal, we all win.

Ready to Upgrade Your Aggregate Processing Operations with Better Technology?

Here at Kemper Equipment, we can revolutionize your operations with the most innovative and technologically advanced material handling solutions available from brands—such as Etheridge Automation—that include the latest in automation and controls.

When you’re looking to “level up” your aggregate processing capabilities—or if you’re getting a new operation set up for the first time—our team of experts is ready to provide full-service support to help you maximize your output. Get in touch with us today to learn more.