Hi Quality has been a family-owned business for 40 years in New South Wales and Victoria, operating a diverse range of businesses in transport, landfills, quarries and recycling.
All of these businesses require a specific set of management skills to be successful. ?We have a wide range of requirements and applications throughout all of these business units, but efficiency is the key to them all being successful,? says Pat Hallinan, owner of the Hi Quality Group.
?We own and operate multiple rock and sand quarries on the eastern seaboard. These quarries all need good equipment and good people. We need to provide the employees with the best equipment to do the job, enabling them to provide the most efficient outcome.?
With this in mind, Hi Quality approached Screenmasters, Australia?s Metso dealer, about a solution to some problems they had encountered in recently acquired quarries.
The first was Hi Quality?s Menangle quarry. The feed material there is a 700mm sandstone, with a high silica content, which is very abrasive with a very high clay content. The requirement was that 100 per cent of the product must pass minus 5mm for processing with a wash plant, to be then on-sold as concrete and construction sand.
Screenmasters principal Mick Lagan knew that it was not going to be easy to achieve a cost-effective outcome. Primary jaws, secondary and tertiary crushing plants, all with relevant screens, could be put in place but this would only result in more machines which require servicing and maintenance, more fuel usage and more things that could and would go wrong over time.
After much thought, Mick opted for only three machines: a Metso LT1213S impactor, one of Hi Quality?s existing screens (to save on capital costs), and a Metso LT7150 Barmac VSI (vertical shaft impactor).
The process was simple. The 700mm sandstone was fed into the LT1213S impactor with a 50mm mesh fitted in its control screen, allowing 100 per cent of the feed product to pass as 50mm over the mobile screen. This screen was fitted with 25mm top deck meshes and 5mm bottom deck harp screens (piano wire), allowing the minus 5mm to be removed and fed directly into the wash plant.
In turn, all of the minus 50mm plus 25mm and minus 25mm plus 5mm sandstone was fed direct into the LT7150 VSI which was in a closed circuit with the screen. The result was an average throughput of 200 tonnes per hour with 100 per cent minus 5mm product fed into the existing wash plant, enabling Hi Quality yet again to supply another valuable resource to the Sydney construction market.
?We approached many companies to provide us with a cost-effective outcome,? says Pat Hallinan, ?but many proved too capital intensive and with no production or quality guarantees. Screenmasters backed their product and told us from the start that they could achieve in excess of 200 tonnes per hour. In the end, we achieved that and more.?
ACHIEVING IN-SPEC
The second issue was at a quarry Hi Quality had taken over near Wallacia in Sydney?s west. Over the years, sales in the quarry had declined and it was up to the Hi Quality team to reverse this trend. On this basis, they spread their net far and wide, approaching local councils, sand and soil suppliers, and many others. One customer had a need for a blend of roadbase that in the past the previous quarry owners had failed to make; they had tried many times but just could not achieve the exact specification required. The Hi Quality team set about making this product with their existing equipment and after much trial and error finally achieved it. This product, however, could not be processed fast enough to be commercially viable. This is where Screenmasters became involved.
?With the success we had at Menangle, I thought it wouldn?t do any harm to get Screenmasters involved in working out a solution to our problems at Wallacia,? says Pat Hallinan.
Once again, Screenmasters brought to site an LT1213S, this time with a split feeder attached, which enabled the pre-screen to effectively scalp out all the fines prior to the crushing process. While this is not a new concept in crushing units, the fact that the pre-screen is separate from the feeder, and has its own motor allowing for a very aggressive screen action with a throw in excess of 10mm, is new.
The split feeder made a massive difference to the production and Hi Quality?s ability to achieve the required specification. By combining this flexibility with the ability to adjust the rotor speed within seconds through the IC500 PLC, the Metso impactor produced 350 tph of in-spec material. That is 3600 tonnes per day of a product that for years was thought to be unattainable from this rock source.
?I was amazed at the impact crusher?s flexibility. Hi Quality owns other impactors but none of them could have achieved this outcome. We were ecstatic with the production, and the control the PLC unit gives the operator over the machine at the push of a button is incredible,? said Pat Hallinan.
Screenmasters have sold over 50 LT1213S, LT1110S and LT1315S impactors throughout Australia with similar results. These impactors have processed millions of tonnes of hard rock, recycled concrete, river gravel, sandstone and even glass.
?In nearly every application, we have been met with a certain amount of scepticism,? comments Mick Lagan, ?but the impactors have very rarely let us down. We know the applications they will perform in and the ones they won?t. Sometimes the weather gets the better of us and we don?t get the production we thought due to the moisture, but we always achieve our outcome.
?I would encourage any quarry operator to take a look at these and other Metso machines before purchasing any capital equipment. With the current exchange rate, these units are more competitive now than at any other time over the last 10 years. When you look in detail at the specification and the performance of the mobile plant it really is the best investment any company can make for their stakeholders.?
Source: Screenmasters Australia