Old meets new: Custom fabrication

By Kevin Yanik| July 6, 2015

A pair of crushers are repositioned with a heavy-duty screen in a  custom-fabrication job that’s providing productivity and portability.

Keith Hagedorn had a unique set of characteristics in mind as he pursued a new screen for his contract-crushing company last winter.

Hagedorn wanted a heavy-duty screen that could handle as many tons of rock as possible. He also wanted a screen that offered the ability to start and finish jobs faster.

The desire for these screening characteristics ultimately drove Hagedorn to MAB Equipment’s Mark Blanchflower, who introduced Hagedorn and his two sons to a potential option.

“My son and I were looking on the Internet and he found that the Deister [Machine Co.] screener was a lot more heavy-duty built,” says Hagedorn, owner of Keith Hagedorn Construction in Spirit Lake, Iowa. “Something that will last a long time is important to me. There’s always a fine line between portable equipment and heavy-duty, but the Deister screen was heavier-duty than everything.”

Screen capacity was an important factor for Hagedorn Construction, as well. The company’s former plant included a 5-ft. x 14-ft. two-deck screen, along with a duplex Terex Cedarapids Commander 556 that featured a 12-in. x 36-in. jaw crusher and a 30-in. x 30-in. twin-roll crusher. According to Hagedorn, the 5-ft. x 14-ft. screen’s capacity was no longer practical for the company’s needs.

“[Hagedorn] asked what’s the largest screen we could put on a portable chassis,” Blanchflower says. “He chose the 8-[ft.] x 20-[ft.] triple-deck screen that also has a triple-shaft mechanism.”

Hagedorn’s particular model – Deister’s TFM3P-3820 – also offers Hagedorn Construction the flexibility it sought in a new screen.

“We had a 3-degree slope put on it to get material to move faster,” Hagedorn says. “Originally we were going to go with a horizontal. The screen chassis has a sand discharge/reject conveyor available. We don’t have it in there now, but it’s something we can slip in there to take out 3/8-in.-minus fines.”

The sand discharge conveyor is a nice option to have, Hagedorn says.

“I make a lot of road gravel, and some of it has an excessive amount of sand,” he says. “Some counties are interested in taking the sand out so they have better quality gravel, and they get another product in deicing sand.

One of Hagedorn’s sons, Brandon, adds that the 3-degree slope is useful in combatting sticky material that would otherwise slow material flow rate.

“All of our material has clay bound to the rock,” Brandon says. “We encounter a lot of wet material and it’s hard to screen. It’s pretty dirty.”

Special capabilities

The TFM3P screen isn’t the only notable feature of Hagedorn Construction’s investment. The screen, of course, needed a home within the plant. So TCI Manufacturing custom-fabricated it to a portable chassis.

Other components were mounted on chassis, as well.

“TCI’s role was to engineer, fabricate and place the Deister screen and Lippmann crushers on two custom-built chassis with conveyors and make the chassis modular so the crusher chassis could be set up on either side of the screen chassis,” Brandon says. “TCI was a key player in this whole project, helping us [make] a large setup like this work together, be portable, [and achieve a] fast setup time and a large throughput.”

Although Hagedorn Construction only operated its new plant for about a month near the end of 2014, the Hagedorns were pleased with the output they saw. According to Blanchflower, the plant was being fed at a rate of nearly 1,000 tph.

“They were giving that screen a good workout,” he says. In addition to the production rate, Blanchflower says the plant gives Hagedorn Construction a number of material blending capabilities.

“I would say they could make an additional four products based on some of the things they did,” Blanchflower says. “We have a lot of blending capabilities with the way these decks are configured. The material retained on each deck can be blended a little bit and sent off as separate products.”

The screen was the most important component of Hagedorn Construction’s investment, Blanchflower says. But the plant’s crushers are fundamental to operation.

“They already owned a roll crusher and a jaw crusher,” he says. “TCI built a brand-new chassis for those to go on. [Hagedorn] sent out those two crushers for TCI to mount on a brand-new chassis, which is separate from the screen chassis.”

According to Keith, his 12-in. x 60-in. Lippmann jaw crusher with a Lippman 42-in. x 36-in. twin-roll crusher is a relatively new piece of equipment. It was built in 2005 for a customer in Texas, but Hagedorn says that customer never used it.

“I guess they had trouble getting it permitted,” Hagedorn says. “I ended up buying it from them. The rolls that are on there were used, but we rebuilt them and we put brand-new tires on it. We completely rebuilt the mechanical components to as-new specs, which included new bearings, seals, tires, hydraulic rams and hoses.” A variable frequency drive (VFD) on the jaw crusher is a key component that helps to manage challenging material, too.

“We worked with an electrical contractor on the switchgear,” Keith says. “He told us we were one-of-a-kind in terms of how much we wanted on the panel. He said few people use a VFD on a jaw because if there’s not as much rock running there’s no need to have the jaw run at full speed.”

But Hagedorn Construction added a VFD to handle a lot of the clay it encounters at pit bases.

“When you put clay through that plant it plugs up the jaw,” Keith says. “When you slow down the jaw, it basically gives the clay a chance to fall through.”

A water-spray system helps clay fall through, as well.

In addition to the jaw crusher on the new plant, Hagedorn Construction has a second jaw crusher – a 3240 jaw from Eagle Crusher – that’s used in certain pits that contain larger rocks.

“I don’t usually use that because it’s a 32-[in.] x 40-[in.] jaw, and most of my pits don’t have rocks that are bigger than 10 in.,” Brandon says.

The 3240 jaw crusher doesn’t see action on every site, but other machines are job fixtures. Hagedorn Construction operates Caterpillar loaders and a Volvo Construction Equipment excavator. It also uses articulated dump trucks (ADTs) to stockpile material.

“Some of our pits are in the middle of cornfields,” Brandon says.

ADTs typically work in tandem, Keith adds. A 50-ton surge bin buys truck drivers time to dump one load and return for the next.

As of late 2014, Hagedorn Construction had only set up its plant on a new site once. But given that experience and everything the Hagedorns know about the plant, they expect each setup to take about three hours.

“Going around corners can be difficult,” Brandon says, “but we’ve got that figured out too because we can raise up the two rear axles and shorten our turning radius.”