Powerscreen mobile crushers in use in County Cumbria quarry, England

A company’s new machines are being used at a quarry operation in north-west England. Civil engineering, plant hire and road haulage group P & L Barton has invested in two new Powerscreen mobile crushing plants

The company, based in Carnforth, north (County) Lancashire, England, sourced the XA400S and 1000 1533 Maxtrak crushers from appointed distributor Blue Machinery Central.

Currently working at a quarry in County Cumbria, north-west England, they join a fleet of excavators and hydraulic attachments, bulldozers, tipper trucks, screening and crushing plants and other equipment owned and operated by the family-run business, which was formed over 40 years ago.

Specialising in sea defence, demolition and site clearance, contract muck-shifting, aggregate production, sand, soil and aggregate supply, it operates from Scotland to north Wales and throughout north-west England.

Peter and Lillian Barton are the directors, with the second generation (Richard and Marie) already involved in running and managing the company.

Traditionally, P & L Barton has been heavily involved in sea defence works and general civil engineering projects, but recently the company found the need to expand its crushing and screening capabilities to meet increasing demand. The decision to buy 447 Powerscreen equipment was largely due to the fact it had been running a 3652 Terex Pegson Metrotrak for a number of years and had been “impressed with its reliability, running costs and throughput.”

This was combined with a well-established relationship with Blue Machinery Central.

“We’ve built up a good relationship with Blue over the years and that’s worth a lot when making these decisions, and we are only an hour away from the company’s Warrington [north-west England] headquarters if we need spare parts at short notice”.

The Powerscreen XA400S mobile crushing plant is designed and built for primary crushing and is said to be ideal for both recycling and quarrying applications, featuring a highly aggressive crushing action with hydraulic crusher setting adjustment and an optimum output of 450tonnes/hour. The high-swing jaw eases material entry into the crushing chamber and the hydraulic adjustment has been developed to enable crusher setting changes to be made over a wide range.
The adjustment is activated without the need to release the draw-back mechanism and this system is said to be particularly suitable for applications where regular jaw setting adjustments are required.

Specifically developed for larger end users, the Powerscreen 1000 Maxtrak cone crusher can accept an all-in feed, which eliminates the need for pre-screening, which would reduce the cubicity of the finished product.

The feed hopper is equipped with a level probe which maintains choke feeding of the cone crusher, improving cubical shape and increasing fines production for road-base applications.

Powescreen says the taper roller bearing design, with hydraulic setting, tramp release and unblocking system “ensures excellent productivity and ease of operation and the metal detection system with integral contaminated material removal reduces the chance of tramp metal from entering the crushing chamber.”

Dust suppression sprays are included as standard to reduce environmental emissions.

According to the company, adjustment can be made on-the-run using touch button controls with direct read-out of closed side setting.

The new acquisitions are working in an 1707 Aggregate Industries’ quarry in Cumbria, where P & L Barton has been tasked with the quarry’s total material production. This involves loading and hauling the blasted material from the face to the processing area where the XA400S is crushing up to 3,000tonnes a day.

When making MOT Type 1 and aggregates, the XA400S is used to feed the 1000 Maxtrak which, in turn, feeds onto a triple-deck screener to produce the clean, separated aggregates stockpiles.

Aggregates being produced include: 40/20mm; 20/10mm; 10-5mm; 5mm; dust; MOT and 6F5.