At a press conference at CONEXPO-CON/AGG in Las Vegas in March, McLanahan?s US president and chief operating officer George Sidney unveiled the Freedom Series of jaw and cone crushers, along with a new deep cone thickener and a new filter press for wet processing.
Sidney said the Freedom Series 4450 jaw crusher was the ?first ever? of a new machine design, ?especially one that redefines a standard machine used in mining operations since 1906?.
After being brought to market in 1906 by Universal Engineering (a company McLanahan acquired in 2012), the jaw crusher design has remained essentially the same for more than a century.
?When McLanahan bought Universal in 2012, we began a pretty daunting task,? Sidney said. ?We began to re-engineer the jaw to create a whole new machine for the mining industry. It was two years in the making, a huge investment for our company. It took the teamwork of a lot of people.?
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Sidney said for 18 months McLanahan met with a range of customers ? engineers, operators, plant superintendents and maintenance supervisors ? to better understand their problems at the primary crushing station.
He said as a result McLanahan has engineered a new crusher line to give aggregate producers a better, safer, simpler and ?smarter? primary crushing solution.
?Our new, re-engineered from the ground up jaw crusher is the Freedom Series 4450 jaw,? Sidney announced. ?We chose a name for this machine that would go beyond simplistic images and represent an empowering concept for our customers.
?And it is a big concept! The Freedom Series 4450 jaw is designed to help liberate our customers from age-old problems at the primary and to empower the operator to get more efficiency and productivity from the primary crushing station than ever before.
?It?s a bold move to name a machine after such an empowering concept but as you discover more about how this machine was designed in collaboration with our customers, how it was re-engineered to be safer, simpler and smarter to operate, we believe you will see why it is worthy of such a name.?
The Freedom Series 4450 jaw crusher features safety lock pins and hydraulic assist for wear part change-outs. McLanahan?s engineers have also designed a simpler way to adjust the closed side settings and provide tramp iron relief. Hydraulic rams are isolated from the crushing action, ensuring longer life and full automation while all but eliminating toggle migration.
A smarter approach has also been employed to engineering the attack angle and crushing stroke pattern; this should increase capacity by up to 15 per cent and minimise wear on the jaw dies.
ENHANCED CONE CRUSHER
Sidney also launched the new Freedom Series cone crusher. Available in numerous sizes, these cone crushers are capable of secondary, tertiary and quaternary crushing while also providing simpler, safer and smarter solutions for quarry operators.
The enhanced safety features include top-down maintenance, safe unblocking with hydraulic opening, adjusting and overload hydraulic cylinders and easy manganese changes. The design features include a low friction, all-roller bearing design, an anti-rotation stop plate and simple PLC control and hydraulic controls.
The crusher also employs a smarter, layered particle attrition approach to crushing, as opposed to conventional compression crushing. This avoids the dilution of the finished product with poor shaped material and ensures excellent particle shape potential in the end product.
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?As with the Freedom Series jaw crushers, this line of cone crushers is designed to liberate our customers of some of the age-old problems associated with secondary and tertiary crushing,? Sidney said. ?The Freedom Series of cone crushers efficiently produces a cubicle product and can solve many complex crushing plant issues.?
Sidney concluded the launch with a discussion about McLanahan?s deep cone thickener and filter press for wet processing applications. Deep cone thickeners are designed to produce dense underflow slurries and pastes and provide efficient methods of separating fines from wastewater.
They are available up to 12m (40?) in diameter and 18m (60?) high. At CONEXPO-CON/AGG, McLanahan displayed the lower cone portion of a smaller unit that would fit onto a 4m (12?) diameter deep cone, which could stand as tall as 13m (44?).
The McLanahan filter press range comprises overhead beam, side beam, recessed chamber and membrane filter plates. The plates range from 630mm to 2000mm in size and provide 225psi, 435psi and 725psi operating pressure.
They can process fines material from a quarter of a tonne per cycle to 25 tonnes per cycle for the largest of quarry operations. The equipment separates the fine particles from wastewater and dries them to a ?cake? that can be disposed of, landfilled or even sold as a
by-product.
Source: McLanahan Corporation