Concrete Crushers by Mark Henricks

Used concrete can be crushed and recycled into a number of uses ranging from general bulk fills to pavement sub-bases for road construction and even new concrete for roads and structures. Recycling concrete saves the cost of transporting for disposal as well as eliminating the energy used to mine, transport and make new cement. Machines that break, remove and crush existing concrete are essential to that process.

Eagle Crusher Company, Inc. of Galion, Ohio manufactures a broad line of heavy-duty impact crushers, portable crushing plants, screening plants and jaw crushers for the recycle markets. “We can build from a real small crusher all the way up to the massive ones,” says Bill A. Royce, Midwest sales manager. “We’ve got a lot of different machines and combinations of footprints.”

The hot product for Eagle right now is its 1200-25 CC machine. “It’s trailer mounted, and we pull that on a chassis and everything goes on that one structure,” says Royce. The package includes a two-deck screen, hopper feeder, diesel drive and electric generator. “It’s totally self-contained,” Royce says.

Eagle’s crushers employ a three-bar steel rotor design. “It came out in the early 1990s and we’ve never had a rotor fail,” Royce says. The same design goes on Eagle’s smallest 5,000 lb. crusher up to its largest 26,000 lb. model. “It’s a pretty distinctive part of our impactor,” Royce says.

Eagle customers range from large recycling companies to small demolition firms, and the machines can be used for a variety of applications. “A guy can buy a 1200 and crush concrete one job, then switch out the screen, make some adjustments and go out and do an asphalt job,” says Royce. “Then he can go and do some work in a quarry. It’s a very versatile crusher.”

Environmental awareness and infrastructure rebuilding drives most of Eagle’s business. The declining value of the United States dollar is helping the company be competitive in Canada, Mexico and other international markets. Larger portable machines are overtaking track-mounted machines in popularity. “We’re seeing that trend where people are starting to step away from the track machines and look at the bigger portable machines,” Royce says.

At NPK Construction Equipment, Inc. in Walton Hills, Ohio, marketing support Steve Kubish says the company manufactures three models of material processors - the M-20 for excavators of 20 to 25 tons, the M-28 for excavators 25 to 40 tons and the M-38 for excavators 33 to 55 tons.

NPK processors have four different interchangeable jaw sets available. The “S” jaw set is optimized for cracking, the “G” jaw for pulverizing and the “K” jaw for shearing. NPK’s new “C” jaw combo-cutter serves a variety of demolition and recycling applications. A hydraulic intensifier system boosts power by amplifying hydraulic cylinder pressure when the jaws meet resistance.

NPK also makes two models of primary and secondary concrete crushers, the U-21 for excavators 21 to 31 tons and the U-31 for excavators 31 to 53 tons. “They come in both a fixed bracket model and the “R” models that come with full 360 degree power rotation,” says Kubish. “These crushers utilize a newly improved, moveable jaw tooth configuration with lower profile teeth on both sides, a high profile center tooth, and a high strength steel center cutter that slices through rebar and light steel structures, allowing these crushers to be used in both primary and secondary crushing operations.”

Regulatory trends have helped business, Kubish says. “With the more complex safety and hazardous materials handling regulations, these crushers provide improved safety by eliminating the need for demolition workers to expose themselves to unsafe conditions while using rebar-cutting torches and working with toxic emissions.”

At Lemac Corp. in Petersburg, Virginia, president Frank Coleman says the company makes one mechanical crusher attachment that comes in different sizes. “We make them for 20 metric excavators up to 120 metric ton excavators,” Coleman says. The mechanical crushers used the power of the bucket cylinder to crush concrete.

Lemac’s mechanical crushers don’t rotate like processors, which can be used to take down columns. Users like them because, unlike stationary crushers, they can handle rebar. “The mechanical tools, for the most part, they’re not used to get real fine breakage,” Coleman says. They’re using to create baseball, softball or football sized chucks they can put through a stationary crusher and to get the rebar out because stationary crushers don’t really like rebar.”

Lemac’s crusher jaws have 15 individually replaceable teeth. “We’ve got a ripper spike on the fixed jaws you can use to pry slabs out,” Coleman says. “And we’ve got rebar cutters built into the jaws that you can cut rebar with.” Lemac’s configuration of two jaws over three jaws produces larger chunks than other crushers. “Most are three over four or more. That concentrates on getting finer breakage,” Coleman says.

With the construction industry in a slump, recycling and demolition is keeping Lemac humming. “Obviously the price of steel and subsequently the price of scrap is through the roof,” says Coleman. “The need to make sure they can get every ounce of rebar out of a job is more important than it ever was.”