A QH331 Sandvik Construction tracked mobile cone crusher is making light work of volcanic rock in South Africa. The QH331 crusher has been supplied by Sandvik Mobile Crushers and Screens distributor, Pilot Crushtec, who recommended the machine to work as part of a crushing train producing base material for a road construction project in the Eastern Cape.
Over the last 20 years the company has provided customers with high quality products and after-sales support.
Using its expertise, the company recommended to a customer that it should invest in the
The QH331 mobile cone crusher is the successor to the QH330, and is a compact machine “designed to meet the most exacting aggregate product quality demands.”
This is achieved through the use of the Sandvik CH430 cone crusher on a tracked chassis. The flexibility of the QH331 is used throughout the world in a variety of applications as it has a choice of six different crushing chambers and a variety of bush settings.
The CH430 is an “an innovative crusher design” from Sandvik’s Hydrocone range.
The hydraulically adjusted Hydrocone is said to be one of the most flexible and maintenance- friendly cones available as it can be serviced entirely “from above,” which helps to simplify maintenance work and reduce costs.
The material in the Eastern Cape road construction application is dolerite, which is a hard volcanic rock with a high work index that is very difficult to crush. However this hardness, and the fact that it is not affected by the weather, makes it highly suitable to be used as base material for roads.
The requirement for this specific project is not only to crush the material, but also to shape it. The QH331, and its CH430 cone, are said to make up the ideal tool to achieve this requirement, utilising the Sandvik-developed cubical shape crushing techniques to produce material of excellent shape and high quality.
The CH430 cone allows material to stay in the chamber longer to optimise reduction and shape, and it is also equipped with a hydroset CSS (closed side setting) regulation system, which allows the operator to adjust the CSS while crushing via the main control panel.
The flexibility of the CSS system on the QH331 is said to have been of particular benefit on this application as it has allowed the machine to produce the required gradation of 0-38mm with a CSS of 20mm.
The QH331 also features Constant Liner Performance (CLP) as a standard feature on the CH430 cone liners and this results in an almost vertical profile in the feed opening area meaning that the shape of the chamber remains virtually unchanged throughout the life of the liners, even on tough volcanic rock such as dolerite.
This has provided the South African customer with a number of advantages on this application, which are said to include constant feed acceptance capability; increased output of a high quality product, and increased liner life helping to reduce the total cost per tonne of operation.
The QH331 is fitted with a CAT C9 or C9.3 engine offering customers optimum efficiency and low fuel consumption through its direct drive system. The customer has achieved a production rate of 120-160tonnes/hour, and have found it to be very economical using 35-40litres of fuel/hour.
“Our customer has a long standing relationship with Pilot Crushtec and we had no hesitation in recommending that they invest in the Sandvik QH331 cone crusher,” says Graham Kleinhans, international director of sales for Pilot Crushtec.
“It has proven to be a very reliable machine that has supported the customer in achieving their objectives for this project, helping them to keep costs down as well as providing an excellent level of efficiency.”
