Breaking Down The Types Of Mining Crushers

[Music] Hi, welcome to Groundwork. This is a podcast from McLennahan Corporation to talk about key material processing topics. Everything from agriculture to mining to material recycling. We'll discuss the best ways to process the raw materials that power the world, because if it's not grown, it's mine. My name is Lee Hylia. I'm the director of Global Sales for Mining at McLennahan. I've been with McLennahan for almost three years now, approximately 25 years in the industry, specialising in sizing apron feeders and crushing and conveying. Today, join with me is Bevin. Do you want to give yourself an introduction? Hey, how are you doing? Yeah, Bevin McLaughlin. I'm the Development Group Manager for McLennahan. Mineral Systems and being with McLennahan for about 14 years, I think now, and worked from McLennahan all over the globe, UK, trips to the US, and now back home in working for the Aussie team, which is a mineral system for the globe. Thanks for having me, Lee. Awesome, Bob. Thanks for joining me. Today, we're going to be talking about all the different types of cruisers in the mining industry. Essentially, straight up, or just get straight into it, what's the goal of crushing in mining? For me, I talk about this often. It's crushing big rocks into little rocks, but obviously it's a lot more complex than that. Bob, do you want to give your insight into that? Yeah, exactly. Everything's way more nuanced than just turning big rocks into little rocks, as you say. I really like to try and dump things down when we're talking about crushing. I try and say that you've got three options. You've usually got the feed is the product. The feed contains the product or the feed's in the way of the product. If you work out which one of those three you've been sitting, then you've kind of off to a good start as to what you're trying to achieve when we talk about crushing. It sounds really simple until you get into the weeds a little bit, I suppose. I think what's interesting as well when you look at different ores, whereas something like iron ore, if you're trying to create a lump product, you don't want to create fines. You've got to look at cruisers that aren't going to create excessive fines. Lime stone, for example, if you're creating fines, that's loss of money because you're wasting your fines. But then when you look at things like copper and gold where you're crushing stuff and you're grinding it down to such a fine particle size, overcrushing and fines creation is not a huge thing. It's quite interesting when you look at that crushing side depending on what the product is, depending on what the outcome is, whether you want to create fines or not, obviously that comes back into which crush it that you select. It's not just generating fines, I mean sometimes the shape is also important. You're talking about where they have slabby products and nice cubicle products. Sometimes circling back to where the feed is the product. So take a good example might be aggregates actually where the feed is the product. You're trying to hit certain particle sizes. You don't really want anything that's too big or too small so you're really trying to control your PSD. So over and under generation is quite important because they're trying to hit drainage targets, things for ballasts and the size fraction that we're typically talking about here is down to probably about 75 down to 10 mil if you're hitting those kind of products from traditional crushes anyway. But as you said, you then move over to a more minerals-based application where they're talking microns that typically where they're talking about the liberation size. So the further along the further they can kick the can down the road to get to their liberation size is typically not wasted energy. So yeah, our whole host of new answers there you can see them right off the bat. Yeah, definitely, definitely. And I think that as a nice segue into what we want to chat about today is all the different types of crushes through the range that are typically used in mining operations. And I guess just off the bat I'll list, you know, jaws, impactors, cones, roll crushes, sizes, rotary breakers, you know, they're just, and of course not forgetting gyra-atric crushes as well. So you know, that whole range of different machines and it's interesting how often that you know, I guess there can be a perceived bias on some of these machines. And you know, and often, you see like, I guess what the first thing I want to talk about is jaw crushes. Obviously, you know, jaw crushes, there's hundreds of them if not thousands of them installed around the world. You know, it's been a sort of staple in the mining industry for many years. But you know, and it's a great machine, the jaw, obviously, you know, typically, you know, two jaw plates, one fixed, one moving, in a compression type, crushing action. But often, you know, used often and very good, but sometimes used in situations where, you know, you go and see when one's installed and you go, yeah, that probably wasn't the right choice. But I guess what's your input there, von jaws? What's your thought? I mean, we tend to think that a rock is a rock. I think that's the easy default position that that people fall into. And sometimes the rock is fine, but then what's mixed with the rock is problematic. If you get high clay, for example, you're just going to gum up these machines and you're really going to struggle with those types of applications. And I think that's probably fairly pertinent for a lot of mines globally as all grades decline. People are starting to push deeper and further along, you start to get below that water table. And so you'll hit more and more clay. That's just one small example of just where it's wrong. And we haven't even talked about, let's say, that it was a good feed, a nice hard feed without clay. But the jaw produces a slaby product or something like that. You've got an ore that fractures along really big slabs, and that can just be problematic for downstream transfer conveyors, downstream equipment. All of these things come into play. It's not just a one size fits all. No, definitely. Yeah, my experience with jaws is, if it's really hard, really abrasive, and it's low tonnage, the jaw is a good machine. There's no getting away from it. It's a good machine. It's typically low ophex because it's a compression tart crusher. So if you've got a really abrasive product, you know, generally your or your gyratory is the go to. But, you know, I've seen installations, two different installations. One where you've got a high clay feed sticky material, you know, in Indonesia, sort of tropical location, lot of clay. And the thing just bogs up. It bogs up. And essentially what they end up doing is just having high pressure water, just blasting this thing, just trying to clear it full of clay. You know, they've got a grizzly at the front end trying to protect the oversize going in. The grizzly is blinding or they're having to use an excavate. It's clear this grizzly. It's just a bit of a mass. And what a nightmare managing that. So let's say it goes through your crusher, then what are you doing with your belt below that? If you've got all this high pressure water, just an absolute nightmare to deal with. I can imagine the stop starts for that plant. So you plant throughput's going to be shut. Yeah. Real. And what about waste? How much product do you lose in? If you blast in high pressure water through, it's all washing down. It's going into some, how much product do you lose in there? When really in a really sticky situation, if perhaps right at the front end, if they've looked at something like a sizeer, I'm probably perceived as being biased towards sizes. Let's not hide behind that. But, you know, yeah, I mean, that's where for me, you know, you wouldn't, or shouldn't pick a jaw. Yes, you know, they're low cost. Yes, they're low RPEX. But for a sticky application, not good. I also had another experience in Western Australia where client was putting in some, I mean, they, you know, this is what happens right to mine. They're putting bigger stuff. But actually, this was a plant in Western Australia where they were putting in these huge lumps into this jaw. And what would happen is because of jaw, they didn't have a rock breaker or anything. So what would happen is, you'd go over the vibrating grizzly, fall into the jaw. And this thing would just sit there, and I was talking to the operators, and they were saying like, they said it sometimes typically, this lump would just sit there for the whole night shift. And the whole production is just almost stopped because they're trying to process this one lump, and just a bit of a nightmare to deal with. That's, yeah, I mean, that's untenable merely. Basically, I have a whole shift, not even just including then the wear rates. That one rock is going to put on your machine, but just you've effectively got your machine doing nothing just from your rock shouting, shadowing. All right, so let's go back then, Lee. If you had swapped the jaw out for say a cone or a gyro in those two applications, would that have fixed the problem? I think you probably look at a gyro as in, you know, if they're going to put that kind of lump sizing, I mean, you first question is, should they have gone a bigger jaw? You know, I forget what what size the jaw was. You know, and this comes into the selection criteria, right? You know, it's an interesting as an OEM supplier. You go in with the machine that you think's going to do the job. You competitor may go in with a smaller machine because it's a lower price, right? And it looks like a great price upfront, but once that machine goes in, if it can't handle it, then it's a big problem. Because if you've got a huge lump truck in your machine, you've already wasted a night shift trying to process it, then you've got to send your team in to get that lump out of there or deal with it. And you've seen instances where they actually put explosives inside the, they blow the rock up inside the machine, right? Which is not very safe and not, you know, but that's a guess the good, what are you going to do? Yeah, that's the consequences, right? Or you have to get operators getting in there with a jackhammer, right? Inside a machine. It's, these are all the knock on effects. I've not selected the right machine for the job. So, if you're circling back to your question, for me, if it's really sticky, if you're in that sort of 10 to 20% moisture zone, and the material is not overly hard, not, you know, I'm not talking, I'm talking like 300 MP, 400 MP, a bond abrasion of like 0.2.3. You've got to be, you've got to be looking at a size of for sticky applications. I think the only time you'd consider not a size of if it's too hard or too abrasive, then yeah, you go for your default, your gyro or your jaw, depending on your size and your capacity. That's my view anyway. Yeah, and I suppose both of those applications are probably talking primary sizes as well, because we're talking, you know, that kind of wet sticky feed and also those big lumps. So first one, yeah, wet sticky feed size 100% you know, just can't beat that self cleaning action on the rolls. But second application where you're talking that big lump kind of sitting in there and chewing, well, yeah, you're right, maybe it is just an undersized machine and it really should have been, you know, the next size or two up and it probably then didn't matter, you know, whether it was a curin or a gyro or not. Obviously, we haven't considered installation costs when we start talking about those things and, you know, maybe that was one of the key drivers to put the drawing in the first place. Yeah, it's definitely interesting and really, I find it really hard from from my side as well, sometimes the information that you get to try and pick a machine on. So we're always looking for more info, you know, how can we make our selection better and really hard to know, particularly because there's such a long duration between when the order comes in machine gets manufactured and it's put on site and it's finally installed and finally commissioned years have gone by. And you sort of going, you run into an issue like that and all of a sudden it's just, well, hang on, why are we having this problem, trying to dig back through everything it's so tough and in that time, particularly if it's a mind and their conditions have changed. Yeah, tough, tough to manage. You know, it's easy for us to say, right, you know, we've got the best machines, you should always buy the best machine. But I think sometimes if it's not about, you know, yes, it is about buying the best machine and the good quality of course, right, you should always buy the best machine. It's the best machine for the job, I think. So I guess yeah, if we go into the next one like gyratory, Christmas, let's, I guess talk about gyratory and cones, so looking at like sort of that primary secondary tertiary. What's your thoughts on gyros? And gyros, particularly you talk about a lot of the big mining, big mines around, they've got to be a staple, right, it's their primary almost of choice. But I think it comes with a huge consequence. Some of these machines are massive, absolutely massive and it's probably, you know, if you're a well oiled machine, you're, you're a big player, you know what you're up for when you put these machines in. 10 meters high, they were a couple hundred tons and you're designing that primary, you know, basically your primary ROM station completely around that crush up. There's no feed, it's just your dump truck is just going to dump directly into it and just let it go. And you would hope then they've got provision for, you know, some kind of rock breaker or an overhead entry crane with a rock breaker and impact attached to it. Great, you know, it's not the first time it's been done, been done everywhere, but consequences like that ROM pad, how tall that ROM pad needs to be to satisfy putting that gyro in, reversing those trucks up to it is just a real money sink. So unless your geology really kind of plays into that. And then on top of that maintenance, you know, you can't move that machine once it's in it's in you've got to do all of your maintenance in situ where it is. I suppose I don't think there's really good or bad in crushes, it's just differences and it just plays things off each other right it's, you know, this is great for this gyro great, you know, it's in terms of handles the big feeds can take the direct, you know, ROM dump from the from your truck, you don't need a feed us, you're going to reduce a bit of wear and maintenance in that regard, but then when you do do maintenance or if you have an issue, yeah, it's getting in that thing is a lot more challenging, you've got to be able to get inside the hopper and really do all your work in there so yeah, that's kind of my experience with gyros anyway. Yeah, yeah, look, I think for high capacity, you know, you're talking most sort of anything from sort of five to 10,000 tons per hour. The only machine that can rival the gyro on through port is a size it, but, you know, if it's like a copper, you know, it's a copper plan that's got, you know, 300, 400 MPa, you know, UCS with a really high bond abrasion index then you're not going to put a size or into that application, it's going to wear out so fast so realistically, you gyro becomes your default choice because it's the only machine really that can do that job. So you kind of like, but it's sort of like a better the devil, you know, well, it's the only devil that's available right? Exactly right. Yeah, what else you're going to do? You can try, try something else, but then, you know, you really don't want to be that guy that's kind of stuck either changing out teeth or other work components every week or every couple of weeks if you've really just not got the selection right. Yeah, although I've said that, you know, again, it's got the limitations and I think I'll come back to play sticky material gyratres do not like play sticky material. Actually had an experience of putting in the size into again a sticky application that you know in the tropical months where you know the gyratra would get bogged they would actually divert their feed to a size so they'd have a gyro as the prime as a main. And when it got into real wet season and it was really sticky and boggy, did actually divert the feed to the size of station and they'd run all the feed through the size because it was obviously better. I guess to me that was sort of validated that that is a reason you know that's the go to when when the material is too wet and sticky you go away from the gyro and you go to a size and that was a plant where had too side by side and they did that very thing. I suppose what we haven't really mentioned there as well is because of the size of these things that they're really not being moved you have to bring the feed to it so you know a lot of these applications definitely they're well set up to do exactly that. But I mean we were talking about not long ago recent application for copper which was not that these guys wanted to be able to kind of move it along and there was a real kind of toss up between. And the size of because it is more mobile compared to you know another piece of kit in the end you know didn't work out whatever happened. But there's certainly some of these considerations that we really need to be engage with the customer and discussing to try and get the best outcome for them because. what ends up happening is well, you might just have really high transport costs because you've got to move this stuff so far, compared to just being able to relocate it, and sure you might have to sacrifice a little bit of downtime. But if you're doing the downtime closer to where you're crushing or even closer to the pit, the benefit cost may start to work out in that regard. - Yeah. - Not a one size fits all, that's for sure. - Yeah, now look, there's a very large copper mine in the US, and they have, I think they've got two or three gyro-atrie relocations. It's semi-mobile gyro, so you can move them, but man, it's a big, expensive task to move those machines. It's really, really big. If you see typically a gyro, let's talk about cone crushes. Obviously, cone, it's like a mini gyro, really, but a next down the line. - Yeah, probably stronger then, so the secondary tertiary then, if we're talking cone V, V gyro, whereas the jaw is probably across a few more, but we're starting to kind of trend down the list, and we've spoken a lot about primaries here, and it's probably time, yeah, we can start talking about secondary. And I think that's really where the cone probably starts to come in more to itself. - Yeah, definitely. I mean, my experience is seeing the cones on that sort of secondary tertiary, almost like tertiary applications. I've seen them installed, you know, obviously, typically after jaws, I've seen them installed after sizes. Obviously, sizes, you know, essentially two rotating shafts, although obviously there has been quad-brow sizes installed around the world. Essentially two rotating shafts, breaking material in sheer point load in that is rocks. And as we know, sizes are really good for wet sticky, you know, softer medium type materials. But obviously, I don't think the industry knows that sizes can do high-through putt as well. You know, it's, I think of sort of not a misconception, but I don't think the ones aware that the sizes are, you know, producing a really, really high capacity. I guess what's your thoughts on, on Sivers? - Ah, look, I'm probably in the same camp as you Lee. I'm a bit of a size of guy. I think they're hugely flexible. I think they're low footprint. And in terms of tonnage, you're right, you know, for the right machine, they can really kind of start pushing up the tonnage and they compete with some of those big machines. The downside, as you say, is definitely abrasion index. You start getting up there into those really abrasive feeds and it's a challenge. And I suppose, you know, I'm a little bit biased because that's been a little bit of a focal point for me lately with regards to the sizes and really trying to improve our offering and our range there. And toe to toe with that comes with all of the wear materials and things that come with it. So, you know, if we're talking about sizes, you know, 10, 20, 30 years ago, you're probably right. Nobody probably considered sizes to be a real contender. But mindings are fairly slow moving beast. You know, there's a lot of innovation there, but it's slow to kind of, in my experience, I think slow to adopt that innovation, being particularly diverse and kind of circling back to your examples before where if you do have a problem, if any one of these crushes does have a problem in situ, I think it takes a really long time to kind of work through that and either gain acceptance down the track once those issues have been sorted or kind of adopt, re-adopt that technology if they've found improvements to kind of push the envelope and help them get what they want. Because at the end of the day, every process that just wants to turn a big rock into the little rock in the cheapest possible way, right? It's all about the economics of it. This is where machines can get a bad name in the industry, especially machines that, you know, relatively new, right? You take a fairly new, I say new, you know, sizes have been around since the 80s, you know, all crushes have been around for 100 years, right? And really, realistically, a size is an evolution of a roll crusher, really. It's a two-throwed crusher. It's a two-throwed crusher, right? Okay, the drive system's different, you know, slow rotation high torque, where typically, you know, roll crushes are faster rotation. So let's take a technology like roll crushes, right? And, you know, I guess the single roll crusher was an original McLennahan patent, right? So you go from a single roll crusher, an original McLennahan patent that's probably 100 years, let's call it 100 years old, I think he might even be 125 years old. The size is, you know, in the 80s, an evolution of the double roll crusher, been around 100 years, size is still considered to be new technology to the mining industry, you know, have slowed the mining industry move on the uptake of some technology is not auto tech technologies, you know, of course, you know, we've got autonomous trucks, autonomous drills, you know, some massive end-vansments in technology and mining, but when it comes to like crusher selection, you know, it's very, very slow to take up the new technology. So I guess getting to my point is you put a machine in that's, you know, been around for, let's say, 50 years, you know, and deemed new technology. One gets put into the wrong application. And it fails or it doesn't work instantly then that could be a number of people in that project team that don't like that machine. It could be a business and then it doesn't like that machine, then that machine then starts to get a really bad name, but it's actually not the machine. It's typically the person or the company that saw that machine into the wrong application, right? So that's why it's really important for us to get that selection right. Absolutely. Or even just managing expectations. I mean, even if it is the right machine for the application. So let's say, you know, you've got a high clay kind of application where you really do need a size, but, you know, you wear rates are still high. That customer engagement is, you know, so vital to just getting that right. Absolutely. Don't tell the customer your teeth are going to last 12 months when you know that you're going to last, you know, six months, right? Manage that expectation up front and say, yeah, look, this, this machine is absolutely the right machine for the job. But this is what your op X is going to look like and let the customer make that decision. Yeah. Yeah. I think the other thing, you know, to touch on with sizes is they are super, super maintenance friendly, you know, typically now most sizes are installed with, you know, motorized wheels. You can move that machine out into a maintenance position. You can access all the teeth really safely and easily. I think if you try and, you know, you look at that versus a gyratory or a jaw, you know, you're having to maintain those machines inside the crushing chamber. Whereas typically a size that you can move it out into a really nice easy access position, you know, often, you know, you know, you know, it's not a confined space. It's not working at heights. It's it's really, really simple and easy to maintain that machine. So, you know, in a world where you are safety practices are evolving rapidly, you know, I think that it's probably one of the safest, if not the safest machine to work on and do maintenance activities. Alright, so we, I guess we've talked about sizes and without being too biased, I think we'll move on. Obviously we have just mentioned role crushers, Beth. And yeah, I guess similar to a size which keen on your views on the role, Crusher. Horses, of course, as I suppose, I mean, a role crusher, if we're going to differentiate between role crusher and a size that, you know, you're getting down to these small to non-existent teeth fairly smooth. In my experience, typically, I was surprised I suppose actually we've got one experience where we were crushing, you know, a lithium type product and we're trying to hit kind of about a three meal. So, things really kind of stood out to me. Firstly was how quickly you start to approach HPGR territory. I'd expected that to happen at much finer sizes, you know, crushing it a lot smaller than we actually were. You know, we were crushing down to that level and found that the power draw really sort of started to ramp up, probably getting close to about that kind of knee, even though we're not producing. in the same kind of conditions as say, and HPGR with the feed stream coming through and you're really getting that kind of ribbon of material to compress through. So these were still kind of single particles, but yeah, it was starting to push it. So we ended up, we supported the customer, we got the machine going, upgraded some power and things like that, but it was a little bit unexpected, I think, from our end. But also materials like that, the salt and the plate-like kind of flaky nature sort of also kind of got me. But beyond that, I mean, Roll Crushers are, you know, they do what they say on the box, say, they're there as a compression style crusher, you know, great when they work, it was a wet application, so it was pretty good to work in that regard, especially designed. But yeah, the, you know, the wear size has kind of came from, so that's it. Yeah, I think it's interesting, I guess just want to touch on some experience when you go down, when you go into smaller and smaller and smaller in product size. The power is almost about, you know, it's almost squeezing the material through. I've got quite a bit of experience in iron ore and when you're trying to crush down iron ore, because there's that much fines in the feed, the fines are almost acting like a break in the machine. And essentially, you're trying to compress and squeeze through those fines, and it's not to be underestimated how much power you need when you're going down to that small size. So it's interesting that you mentioned on the, you know, I think was I don't know, almost like a small smooth roll size or was it a roll crusher that project? Yeah, it's a smooth roll crusher. Yeah, you know, it can come at a different angle. Yeah, look, the power required actually when you're going down to such a small size, you know, that's something where, you know, companies can become a bit unstalk, where you underestimate how much fines is in the feed and how much you've got to compress those fines and how much power that absorbs actually. You know, we talk about obviously we're we're selecting a crusher on on the UCS, but of the hardness, right? And it's, you know, the, the actual pick force that we talk about a lot. But yeah, the impact of things like clay, how much more power you need when you're trying to again, it's trying to act as a break in the machine. And it's similarly with fines, high fines acts as a break. So interesting with roll crushers, you know, talking, I want to talk about the speed because obviously the way that they get there through port typically roll crushers are running a lot faster RPM that sizes. So I think that's the reason that the roll crushers are getting the small product size and getting the throughput is because they've got a very, very fast rotational speed. Yeah. Which works well from an inertia perspective to help with crushing as well. It's not just about throughput. Yeah. But there's a little bit of a, I mean, I've got, I think as I mentioned at the start of the show, I've got a bit of experience with a lot of different McHwanahan systems. And I know working with a lot of the US guys, there's a, you know, in the sand division doing sand plants for frax sand. It's interesting. So I did a little bit of lab work with those guys. And when you're choosing a frax sand product, you're actually based in on kind of two criteria. There's ferricity and roundness. So how's spherical it is? And then how rounded those edges are? It's really just talking about shape. But the whole point of the frax sand is it's to act as a propant. So you want to send it down into the earth. And it's going to be propping open those visions to allow whatever you're trying to extract to come through. So you kind of take that back to a crushing perspective. If you've got these really round particles and when we spoke about shape, this is kind of, you know, how it can become important as well. Round particles are chosen because they're just stronger. So they're just resistance, resistance to crushing is higher. So we're trying to come up from the other end where we want to take these particles and crush them down. So there's a little bit of a draw card, I think, there for me between seeing that end, how we've manufactured those sands and propants and things in the past because we don't want them to crush. And then here we are at the other end being, I don't know, we want to crush those as well. And just kind of noting, I suppose, the similarity between the two distinctions. Yeah, definitely. And it's funny, obviously, we have that cro- in McLeaner hand, we have that crossover, obviously. We're on the binding division side, and we've got our aggregate division. And there is, you know, we're obviously talking, this is a mining podcast, we're talking about mining equipment. And nearly on the conversation, we talked about impactors. You know, me personally, I don't have a huge amount of experience with impact crushes. And probably because they sit more on the aggregate side and more, you know, for sort of a limestone and that kind of application. We don't just, it's a product that, you know, I sometimes talk about, you know, products that go in and out of fashion. And I think I mentioned in one of our other podcasts is like the wobbler feeder, you know, it was kind of a really great product sort of went out of fashion and then sort of come back into fashion now. I was the impactors, you know, it's got its place. But for me, you don't see them installed in that many mining applications. Yeah, I tend to agree. I think when we're talking mining and we're talking about those, you know, we'll call it minerals mining and those bigger plants, these types of crushes just don't get a lot of air time. So I don't have a lot of experience directly with, you know, those impactile style crushes like VSIs and HSI's. Although I will say that, man, I've done a lot of one and a lot of weird and wonderful things from the clan of hand. There was a VSI that we used from a crushing glass to make sand actually for recycling. And that was probably the most experience I've got with one of those and the biggest issue is actually dealing with the labels of the bottles. The labels from the bottles were actually causing a few issues with regards to the crusher because, you know, they obviously come in and kind of gum things up. So a couple of process changes, you know, to wash those out beforehand and then, yeah, we're effectively making kind of manufactured sand which was used in their kind of recycled concrete application call it. Now we'll recycle glass for concrete. But yeah, you know, horses for courses really with some of these crushes. That's just, you know, and again, it's orders of magnitude different in terms of scale, in terms of feed, in terms of everything. And, you know, it's such a broad topic when you're talking about different crushes and what they're used for. I mean, obviously we're mineral systems here. So, you know, we're heavily focused on the minerals and mining market. And that's just a small fraction, I suppose, of what's potentially out there and available. Yeah, definitely. Thanks, Beth. That's a good interesting story. It's, yeah, you know, I guess just very quickly to achieve on a couple of little like recycling is a really interesting one, right? You know, quite often, you know, concrete recycling is something that gets asked a lot. And, you know, that's fine, the concrete's fine, but it's the re-baw that's in the center. So, that's quite problematic, right? You know, there has been, you know, sizes and jaw crissors used. You've just got to be careful with the re-baw. And I remember a tire shredding project some years ago about, you know, shredding tires. But again, you know, if you've got any kind of like steel in those tires, it's problematic. So, but an interesting one, yeah, obviously we're focusing on the mining, but you do have those crossovers now and again, you know, between the sort of the aggregate recycling and the mining, which is, I guess, beneficial for us at McLeaner-Harm being able to crossover between, you know, the different industries. I guess just to round out our discussion, we've been talking a lot today about mineral, but obviously one of our, you know, parts of our business as well is coal. You know, and many of our, you know, products like sizes, you know, are used effectively on coal. In fact, you know, that's where kind of sizes started out in coal. But yeah, I guess a couple of machines that I guess want to just finish up on before we end that podcast is obviously first one's feeder breakers. Obviously feeder breaker, being a combination of a chain feeder and a breaker drum or breaker head that we call it. Very, very popular obviously in coal, salt and very, you know, sort of soft, non abrasive, non-typically non-sticky applications. Obviously at McLeaner-Harm, you've had a quite a bit of experience with our feeder breakers. I'm being interested in your thoughts on the on the feeder breaker and where it sits in the mining industry. Oh, look, I think the feeder breaker is possibly the a little bit understeer. in how great they actually are. The ability, so there's a typical rule in process engineering where if you have a machine trying to do two jobs, it's not really good at either of them. And I would say the feeder break is possibly actually a little bit of an exception to that rule. Particularly when we're talking about, so just in and of itself, a feeder breaker can come in many different flavors. You can have just an incline, you can have a goose net kind of version. We've done all kinds of versions throughout our history kind of thing. And it's just to really kind of understand the impact it can have just a feeder breaker itself. Obviously eliminates the need to have a feeder and then some kind of crushing plant. So it's acting as your primary crush off for any plant. So first up, there's a bit of a win there. That's a win for overall plant height as well as just the equipment and everything you've got installed. Really good. And then the fact that you can make that goose net style, well now you're talking about rom pad height. And really, we spoke about kind of crush ratio before. So a feeder breaker as well can take those really big lumps and make them a really suitable size for downstream plant equipment. So you've got wins for rom pad height, wins for, it can handle the tonnage, wins for multiple machines in one. And it's really kind of a fantastic machine for what it does. It does it well. It does struggle with the higher abrasivity feed. So really abrasive feeds are going to hurt it. It's, and that's why it typically does get used a lot in the cold, the limestone, the salt. We're seeing it even beyond those applications, coaking coals and coaking applications. And then after coaking plants have been through turning some of their, the Coke itself breaking that down. We've seen a few applications, but yeah, it really is limited to lower abrasivity type applications. But for what it does, it's a great machine. A great machine done well, definitely. It's interesting, obviously, being three is in a Klanahan. Feed-a-breakers were something considered to be like, you know, almost, well, it's a cheap and nasty, but I think a lot of companies in the industry would have referred to it as, you know, was almost like, what's, you know, like, less, like, not up to the, you know, the, the, the, the gyratory or the size, kind of, will, but actually, like, the advancements that I've seen that Klanahan have taken this feeder breaker, that probably, what, you know, and a lot of equipment back in the 80s or the early 90s, you know, was not particularly great technology, but I think what I've seen, just, you know, if I was standing back as an outside point of view, the advancements of the Klanahan feeder breaker, you know, and not all feeder breakers, like not all cruisers are equal, right, across different competitors, not all feeder breakers are created equal, designed equally, because our feeder breaker has been taken to what I think is, is probably the best feeder breaker on the market, purely because of its advancements in technology, its where-life, its maintainability, and its robustness, that I think it's, it's actually a, you know, a Class A product now, and it's proven because it's the go-to choice in coal mining applications for the primary crusher. So, yeah, I think it's a fantastic piece of kit. - You know, even just in the history of, you know, what we've been doing here, particularly in Australia, a lot of the wins that we've had is actually in displacing what which typically considered to be three stage crushing plants and taking them back to two. So, we talk about that crusher ratio, and really just being able to hammer those really big lumps and get them down to a suitable size for the secondary. And we spoke about earlier where, you know, the three different crushing applications, the feed is the product, or the feed contains the product, sorry, the product is in the feed. Yeah, this is really an application where the feed is the product, so we're still caring about controlling fines, we're still caring about controlling over an undersized, the coal industry is no different than a lot of industries, they've got specifications they need to hit with regards to, you know, the shape and size of those particles. And, you know, the fact that you can displace an entire crusher from a circuit and take it back to two stage is really, like that's a real win for the customers bottom line. Not just in terms of op-ex, but CapEx, it's one less machine you've got to maintain. So many benefits. And then you couple that with reduces in ROM-pad cost because now your overall plant structure is a lot lower, not just because it's a, say, a feeder breaker or an incline feeder breaker, but because you don't have that machine, like it's just absolute game changer, I think, for a lot of plants, and particularly, as you say, where it was typically viewed to where it's strength lies, which is, you know, that real kind of primary application of taking those big lumps, put them into that really kind of specific size group suitable for the secondary whilst not making too many fines, whilst controlling all of those things and being able to handle the mining duty that they do. Yeah, no, and you're back at the point, right? And you think about going from, without any compromise, if you can go from a three stage Christian circuit to a two stage, that's one less transfer, one less crusher, you know, the actual, if you looked at that side by side on a fines generation, you would have far less fines generation on a two stage system than a three stage system. From the coal industry, that's all about, you want to get down to a specific size, by basically producing as minimal fines as possible, because fines, it's not only waste, you know, which, again, it's problematic, right? Because then if you look at further down the circuit, more fines, you know, you're up into deal with that, you know, and obviously you've been, been, you know, one about, work process experts on, on thickness, you know, all about that, right? You're creating more, you're sending more fines, you're sending more waste to that back end of the system. It's even bigger of a problem, right, to deal with, a more money. Absolutely. And it's, it's a valuable product to lose as well. You're talking about lost product. So it's not just about dollars per tonne to process, you've got to then recover those tons to be able to sell. So, you know, every tonne that you lose is lost opportunity effectively. Yeah, it really does lend itself to controlling fines is, is in the right application, exactly what you should be aiming for. But then really trying to understand that balance is, is fantastic for helping process engineers as well, because they're going to design the different circuits. Every time you split off a feed stream, everybody's always concerned about, okay, how many tons are going this way or that way? And, you know, really it starts at the crusher and understanding those partitions and feeding them off. And by the time you get down to, you know, tail end of the, the wet process stuff, it really, it really can matter. Yeah, so it's just something that we've really got to be on top of and, and that's definitely a focal point for us. Certainly tell my team, you know, we care about crusher ratio, because crusher ratio for me is about, you want to, as efficiently as possible, turn those big rocks into little rocks. And if you can displace an entire machine, go from three stage to two stage crushing, you know, we just spoke about how immensely beneficial that can be to any plant, doesn't matter what, what you're processing. And then really understanding our fines generation, sometimes it's important and sometimes it's not. And that partly comes back to selection, but also there's a lot of, a lot of design aspects there as well. So yeah, we put a lot of effort into those two key things, you know, definitely their front of mind every time we're looking at any kind of machine that we're designing. And that's interesting, but that because you talk about selection criteria, right? And I kind of bang on about this all the time. And you mentioned it earlier in this podcast, this information, there's much information as possible, more information, as much information as possible, is the best way, you know, things like, what's the infeed side? Have you got an infeed gradation? That makes a massive difference, you know, what products are, what is your product size? What, you know, when I say product size, you know, oh, we need 50 mil, or we need 100 mil, is that like, have you got safety factors in that? Because that 20, 10 20 mil difference changes the selection of the crush it. So it's like, right, okay, what's your next downstream process? What's the limitations of that, you know, are you telling me 100 with a safety factor when really that machine can do 150? Well, if that machine can do 150, that makes my selection up here, I can make a better selection, which is lower opx, lower cap ex, perhaps, or, or maybe it's higher op ex or half cap ex, you know, that really informed information on the next. piece of equipment in the process is really key to making the right decision. And then other things like, you know, how hard is it? Okay, it's 50 MPa, right? It's 50 MPa, but nominally is it? You know, 80% of you feed 30 MPa and 5% of it's 50 MPa. Just the more granular it, you can get on your information or more detailed, can make a massive selection as you know. And even just beyond that, it's hard to, sometimes people don't even realise some of the averaging they give us when they give us information. So they might say the feed is, I don't know, 50 MPa or 80 MPa. But then, is that just the feed? Or are you talking about the feed and the contaminants or just the contaminants? Yeah. Understanding those things can be really, really vital as well in us understanding the correct, to make that correct selection. Absolutely. You know, because also, you know, it may be, your contaminant may be 5%, 1%, 50%, right? And if your contaminant is three times, four times harder than you, you know, you know, you know, nominal feed. But that makes a huge difference on your power calculation as you know. Yeah, one of the best pieces of information I ever received was someone gave us, you know, we talk about abrasion index. And again, that's another one that gets kind of averaged out. But we were given abrasion index by mineralogy. So, I mean, that was amazing to just kind of see that level of detail where someone had given us, "Oh, you know, we've got this kind of fields bar and it's going to have an abrasion index of this." And then, you know, it's going up to some other, you know, quartzite kind of thing. And then it was abrasion index of this. And just being able to really kind of knuckle down and really get into weeds of that was just beyond amazing, particularly for someone who's, you know, I'm an engineer. So, I like numbers and I like information. So, you know, to have that kind of information at my fingertips was just amazing to be able to do a selection and really kind of work with the customer and go, "Oh, okay, I get what you're working with now. It's not just somebody else has already taken the data and cleaned it for me and then not given the context around it." All right, Beth. Well, thanks very much for your time today, mate. I think we'll wrap it up there. Any closing thoughts from yourself? Oh, look, I think we've probably got into enough weeds here today. It's probably sufficient to say that crushing eight crushing, you know, we barely even touched on, you know, removing overburdened. We barely touched on so many other aspects that we probably could have spoken about here today. And even probably a few other machines that look really appreciate, appreciate the chat, mate. It's been good. Yeah, and I think that'll probably do for now. Well, the listeners can look forward to maybe part two and part three. Hey, what's the saying? The sequel is always better than the first, right? Hopefully, just as good. Oh, yeah. Fingers crossed. Thank you for listening to Groundwork and McLeanhan podcast. Be sure to subscribe on your favourite listening app for new episodes and follow McLeanhan on social media for more content. Thank you very much.