A large Swedish construction equipment company has invested in Metso crushers. Other manufacturers have also been busy. Patrick Smith reports.
Faced with customer demands to become a one-stop-shop to the construction industry, Engströms Group bought mobile crushers to increase production capabilities.
The group, one of Sweden’s largest construction equipment companies in the road construction and building industry, also wanted a service package to ensure the equipment would be well-maintained and have maximum availability.
Engströms Group performs mobile contract crushing, and has permanent clients and regular fixed contracts, with a range of end-product materials and sizes that varies to satisfy customer specifications and needs.
It wanted to secure the value of its assets by identifying potential service issues early, and to be able to monitor how the machines were operating, to get ahead of the curve in assessing performance.
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“After the investment in the new crushers and service contract, we have increased production by 30%,” says Torbjörn (Tobbe) Pettersson, supervisor for “construction and crush.”
Jan-Olow Engström, CEO of Engströms, says: “We work in symbiosis with the customer and with Metso. We believe it is important to deliver a quality product, and we take care of the whole process, from measuring and blasting to crushing and, at times, the transport of crushed material too.
“We have been established in this industry for some time, and we have learned how to work and manage to promote efficiency and orderliness.”
Engströms started with crushing to be a complete supplier to the industry and has been a customer of Metso since 2002, when it first bought a Lokotrack LT110. With heavy demands to grow its crushing operations, the new machines were added to its fleet in 2016 when construction started to take off.
Engströms’ solution to maintaining the new LT120 and LT300HP mobile crushers involved signing a five-year Life Cycle Service agreement. The contract involves a monthly payment for wear and spare parts as well as a service inspection every thousand hours. A spare parts kit was also made available at Engströms’ stores in Örebro to further guarantee the availability of parts when needed.
Having all the spare parts on site gives a big boost to availability. Furthermore, the agreement gives additional peace of mind with extended warranties, such as a one-year extension to the standard warranty, which means five years in total, or 10,000 hours for selected parts.
“The LCS agreement also includes Metso Metrics Services, a cloud-based tool for real-time monitoring with visualisation of collected data. As a registered user, we can follow our machines via satellite,” says Tobbe Pettersson.
“For example, we can see operating hours, loading, idling, maintenance requirements, fuel consumption and the GPS position. It is a fantastic tool, and from my office, several kilometres away, I can monitor and see exactly how the crushing is progressing.”
Jan-Olow Engström added: “Overall, we see the collaboration with Metso more as a partnership, where we find solutions together. We can now monitor the production process in its entirety and have control over wear and spare parts. This is security for us. We are extremely satisfied with Metso and are now evaluating whether to add to our machine park with a screener as well.”
In Switzerland, two specially made STE 100.65 TV PB mobile track-mounted jaw crushers from Austrian company
SBM says the plant offers compact dimensions, being 19m long; 2.65m wide; 4.2m high, and with a weight of 57.5tonnes. A low feed height of 2m allows easy material feed by wheeled loader in the tunnel.
Construction of the 5,860m-long Albula Tunnel is carried out by drilling and blasting, and the granite/dolomite material must be pre-crushed to 0-150mm, a task performed in the tunnel by the SBM crushers. This material is removed by conveyor belts up to 3km long.
The SBM plant is designed for full electric operation, and each offers a throughput capacity of up to 250tonnes/hour each.
The company’s Transformer Series comprises an excavator, loader, tractor-mounted processing bucket which screens, pulverises, aerates, blends, mixes, separates, crushes, feeds, and loads materials.
The series comprises the compact DL and D-Series, and the M-Series for mining processes, quarrying and aggregates, where the crushing and loading of raw material, such as soft limestone can be completed in one cycle.
“The ALLU Transformer M-Series is a range of multi-faceted tools powered by the carrier they are mounted on,” says ALLU.
Different drum configurations of 50mm, 75mm, 100mm, and 150mm mean differing fragment sizes can be processed, and the Transformer M-Series has been designed to fit excavators and wheeled loaders of up to 160tonnes.
Meanwhile, during the recent CQMS’17 construction and quarrying exhibition in County Offaly, Ireland,
The machine, set to build on the success of the Warrior 600, is a heavy-duty, versatile incline two-deck model, capable of stockpiling and scalping before and after crushing units.
Its aggressive screen can accept bofor bars, finger screens, woven mesh and punch plates, along with other application-specific media types.
During CQMS’17, Fergal McKenna, product management engineer at Powerscreen, stressed the Warrior 1200’s “smart” geometry; great fuel efficiency; “impressive output” for its size class: up to 400tonnes/hour when processing certain materials.
Rapid set-up time and ease of operations is aided by the model’s hydraulically folding conveyors, two-speed tracks, and quick two-way split conversion, says McKenna.
“The Warrior 1200 can be used in urban environments and is a good machine for rental customers,” he added.
At the CQMS’17 event, the Warrior 1200 was fed with rock by a TrommALL MS2500 screen.
McCloskey International’s new version of its I54 mobile impact crusher follows worldwide field site visits, where the feedback from customers has resulted in significant changes to the crusher, including direct drive; an enhanced material flow path; larger pre-screen, and a more open chassis.
The company says that efficiency is boosted with the new crusher design, particularly in the material flow path. Each sectional component is wider than the last to allow an unrestricted flow without funnelling or narrowing, eliminating material bridging.
“The I54v3’s new larger double deck pre-screen brings more efficient fines removal to production, maximises the crusher’s productivity, and delivers screened product via a straight chute to a new, wider side conveyor,” says
“The I54v3’s versatility and upgraded design makes it ideal for some of the toughest applications worldwide, including asphalt recycling, concrete recycling, rock crushing, construction and demolition.”
The screen works with two side transfer conveyor belts for producing the multiple products. Users can rotate the return conveyor out to make the fourth product or keep it in place to return the oversize to the crusher to be re-crushed.
The company has also introduced its new TS-518 mobile tracked screening plant with hydraulically powered components, including conveyors, which allow operators to move the machine into place for production in as little as ten minutes.
It is powered by a Cat diesel engine, and is offered in two- or three-deck models, featuring two-bearing screen boxes for sorting a wide range of materials, including aggregates, concrete and sand.
The encouraging trading picture for the Swedish mining and quarrying equipment manufacturer is revealed in the Sandvik 2017 first-quarter interim report.
“We noted good momentum in our businesses in the first quarter. Improved customer activity resulted in positive order growth in all three business areas and in other operations,” says Björn Rosengren, president and CEO of Sandvik, in the report.
“Organic growth in order intake was 16% compared with the year-earlier period, supported by all business areas, thus laying the foundation for future revenue generation.
“Growth was particularly strong in Sandvik Mining and Rock Technology, driven primarily by equipment replacement orders.”
Sandvik Mining and Rock Technology’s order intake improved by 30% year-on-year, yielding a book-to-bill of 122%. The business area’s revenues increased by 6% due to the time required to convert the recent positive order growth into deliveries, and one large order totalling about 280 million SEK was received in North America.
Product categories for underground drilling, loading and hauling, as well as surface drilling, reported the strongest order increase.
Changed exchange rates positively impacted operating profit by 183 million SEK.
Sandvik Mining and Rock Technology’s financial overview within the report showed that the order intake in Q1 2016 was SEK 7.266 billion (€759 million), while in Q1 2017 the figure is SEK10.247 billion (€1.07 billion).
