Notes from Metso’s expo

Metso hosted an educational event earlier this month for dealers and customers at its headquarters in Columbia, S.C., drawing about 120 personnel from 34 dealers across the United States, Canada and Latin America. The event, called the 2013 Quarry Solutions & Industry Knowledge Expo, also attracted about 100 customer personnel, according to Metso. Pit & Quarry attended the event, as well.

Both dealers and customers had the opportunity to sit in on training sessions, walk around Metso equipment and participate in factory-floor demonstrations. This was the second straight year Metso hosted the event according to Adrian Quigg, whom Pit & Quarry sat down with to discuss the event in further detail, the state of the company and for a look ahead to ConExpo-Con/Agg.

Pit & Quarry also sat in on an educational session about in-pit crushing. Tommi Lehtonen, senior vice president for Metso’s Mobile Equipment business unit, led the session for about a dozen dealers and customers. Lehtonen noted that excavators should be a producer’s top choice for loading into Metso’s portable equipment because excavators offer continuous feed and operators can actually see the crusher.

“Excavators are more affordable to run compared with wheel loaders because wheel loaders are loading and carrying,” says Lehtonen, who adds that hauling represents about 50 percent of in-pit costs. “For us, excavators would be our number one choice.”

Still, Lehtonen says there are exceptions that make loading equipment other than excavators attractive.

“Of course, at bigger operations, you might run out of excavators,” he says. “Use a face shovel or a wheel loader. This gives you more flexibility because you can use a track-mounted unit more and shorten the distance from the face. You can easily feed from different locations of the face.”

Lehtonen also says excavators can typically maintain their position for most of one day, as long as they have enough material to load.

“You might move an excavator one time in a day,” he says.

In addition to the in-pit crushing session, Metso made presentations on crusher liner analysis and optimization; opportunities to reduce screening and lining costs; and producing a consistent product.

One new development at Metso is that its screen media is now being produced and shipped directly from Columbia. Before, Metso imported all media from Sweden. According to Gary Phillips, an injection mold operator, Metso has been making all molding for media in Columbia for about one year. Phillips also says Metso’s machine is capable of making about four media per hour.