5Things You Must Stop Doing to Your Cone Crusher

RELEASE TIME:2017-07-12 14:17:15

 1. Neglect your maintenance: you go one day without maintenance and you see no consequences. Soon enough you are encouraged to send the crew home early so you can save a few bucks on the time they would have spent on manufacturers recommended maintenance. Or worse, the crew is not even trained to look after the equipment, so they don’t even know what to look at, even if they were to do maintenance. No maintenance means neglect to check on filters, which leads to poor flow of lubricants, which will burn up a $50,000 bearing in a few minutes. A clogged air-filter or and breather can causes positive pressure to build up inside the bearing housing. This makes a seal pops out and then you have a sealing problem in a place that requires the head to be pulled for a proper repair. If you don’t fix the seal, oil will spill out and dirt will get in and your problem gets more expensive each day.

2. Poor housekeeping: it is ironical to think about housekeeping in a place that seems so full of dust and mud, but we see the destructive, costly results of things that are left to the wind. Electric and hydraulic cabinets are left open; they collect dust and moisture and the components inside fail prematurely. Rocks that fall around the crusher is allowed to build up and rubs through hoses and electric wires. Filters are allowed to clog.

3. Fail to check for wear: Every machine wears down. The question is “How much is too much?” To a certain point, it is economically feasible to repair wear, but let it go too far and you get vibration and metal fatigue and a host of related problems that means to could be “cap ex time” when you have no capital expenditure budgeted.

4. Shock loading with feed material: yes, the machine is built to crush, but when you dump a bunch of material in all at once, the head momentarily gets pushed down and squeezes out the thin film of oil that separates the spinning parts from the stationary parts, like at the thrust bushings. Before you know it, parts don’t fit together the way they are supposed to and you have a big, expensive paper-weight on your hands.

5. Run your wear liners thin: Manganese wear liners, aka “bowls” and “mantles”, can be expensive. And there is a temptation to run those liners until they all but fall out of the bottom of the crusher. It can be done, but it is false economy. The cost of replacing manganese pales compared to repairing or replacing any of the parts that were left unprotected by the liners.

There is more, of course, but this should give you the idea that cone crushers are fickle machines if you don’t treat them right. Using your operators’ manuals to check your equipment routinely and frequently is key to managing your production cost-per-ton. If you feel your personnel is not trained to perform the necessary maintenance, then partnering with a provider that can supply proper training, service, and auditing could save you loads of money in the long run.