Uncompromising secondary Crushing
There is no hiding their enthusiasm when the “decision makers” at Vogelsberger Basaltwerk GmbH & Co KG, VBW, part of the Dressler Verwaltungsgesellschaft GmbH group of companies describe their latest edition, the optimally designed Sandvik CS550, a powerful and reliable high-throughput unit that delivers precision and quality at the secondary stage. The Büdingen-Rinderbügen quarry in Wetteraukreis, Germany, has been supplying the basalt that is characteristic of the Vogelsberg landscape since 1963. The basalt is currently quarried and reduced to gravel, chippings and fine flint, as well as crushed sand.
The first step of the modernization programme was to replace the secondary stage crusher – a 1650 cone crusher that had been in operation since 1984 – with the aim of improving capacity and product quality. Always satisfied with the service and support from Sandvik, VBW’s decision makers favoured replacing the crusher with a Sandvik CH-series Hydrocone, even though they knew this decision would also impact operation of their primary crusher. However, at just the right time for VBW, Sandvik announced the new CS550 that was even more ideal for their requirements, any final doubts they might have had were quickly dispelled by running process simulations with Sandvik’s Plant Designer Programme, featuring data from their own basalt.
This new innovative cone crusher uses a range of familiar components from the proven CH crushers and operates at higher pressure levels compared to traditional CS crusher, has low-maintenance and many safety features and is less sensitive to material feed variations, for example than a secondary crusher from the CH series.
Putting theory into practice
The eminent suitability of the CS550 as a viable alternative to the CH-series for secondary stage crushing at VBW quickly became clear. The large C-chamber intake to match the jaw crusher in the primary stage quickly "swallows" the crushed material of 250 to 350 mm in feed size, and thus offers the possibility to produce large volumes of the final grain fractions even at the secondary stage, while ensuring a high reduction ratio and an excellent shape of the end product. Between 250 and 300 tonnes of material per hour can be processed, with seemingly no effort, to the target particle size of 0/56 mm, with the proportion of the preferred particle size of < 32 mm being around 80 percent. The wide range of additional settings, together with additional, larger throws of 24/28/32, 32/36/40 and 40/44/48 mm provides excellent processing flexibility if this should be needed. The reduction of fine material that is required is a strikingly positive feature compared to the old crusher. The Sandvik CS550 also clearly meets VBW’s requirements in terms of oversized particles (>32/X).
Automation, control and ease of access
Of course, the Sandvik CS550 comes as standard with a modern crusher control system. It uses Sandvik's latest automation and control system and is state-of-the-art in terms of automation and machine/process control of the crusher, supplying a wealth of valuable data. It optimizes operation in correlation to throughput and reduction ratio and adapts the crusher to suit different operating conditions, thereby ensuring that an optimum level of consumption is always achieved in terms of energy efficiency.