• Reddit
• Digg
• Facebook
• MySpace
• del.icio.us
• StumbleUpon
• Technorati
• Furl
• Newsvine
• Google Bookmarks

Photo: Eco-Crusher

The right crushing, breaking, and pulverizing attachment paired with an excavator or loader creates a powerful, portable, and profitable green machine that is ideal for demolition, in-place recycling, and reclamation.

Green roads, green demolition, and recycling in place are the next hot trends in sustainability, according to the Construction Materials Recycling Association. Municipalities and state departments of transportations are finding that green initiatives, such as the use of recycled concrete aggregate and recycled asphalt, not only serve an environmental purpose but also allow a greater control over costs. As such, the use of a variety of breaking-and-crushing attachments is allowing new green construction strategies—and the latest improvements in these units have created a highly productive and affordable alternative to the mobile track-mounted crushing plant. And importantly, using the right tools means cutting time off of demolition and reclamation projects and putting more money back into the bottom line.

In-Place Recycling Cuts Costs
Greg Ogle is a regional sales manager for the IronWolf Crusher, an attachment designed to mount on wheel and track loaders. In a recent presentation before the American Concrete Pavement Association, Ogle contrasts traditional concrete recycling methods with the new in-place recycling approach. The typical steps include breakout, load and haul, separation of steel, crushing and screening, and load and haul back—all of which add considerable and unnecessary costs. Ogle suggests that by using a crushing attachment, the new method of concrete recycling would include fracture, crush-in-place with the crusher attachment, grade-and-compact, and then pave.

Photo: Fahr The Fahr Roadcrusher is primarily targeted to forest road development and low-volume or secondary road resurfacing.

According to IronWolf National Sales Manager Jay Baker, his company’s unit is quite effective at in-place crushing of asphalt and concrete particularly if the slabs do not exceed 8 inches. Thicker slabs can be processed after prebreaking. The attachment was used on the reclamation of a 10-inch-thick concrete airport ramp that had first been shattered by a guillotine-type breaker, he says.

“Contractors often say our unit looks like a milling machine. It will mill, but it is not a milling machine. On the latter, the teeth do all the work. In our unit, it is the housing that does all the work. It is literally an impact crusher on a wheel loader,” says Baker. “The unit breaks out material and pulls it up into the housing, which contains three evenly spaced breaker bars. The centrifugal force of the drum casts material fragments with extreme force into the housing, where they are shattered against the breaker bars, resulting in the processing of 3- to 4-inch-minus material. A second pass would take it down to 1.5-inch-minus material,” he says.

According to Baker, the original design of the IronWolf was to process native rock, with the application being commercial and residential site development. “Contractors can use it to process the rock and cut the job site down to grade. Then the machine will make a usable 3-inch-minus material in place. It eliminates the need to haul in material, as select fill material can be made onsite and they don’t have to rip it with a dozer, or blast it, or bring in a portable crusher,” says Baker.

Recently, Baker says that the Missouri Department of Transportation participated in a demo of the IronWolf unit to consider its use in recycling and reclaiming some existing roads via the process of full-depth reclamation (FDR) with cement. This process rebuilds worn-out asphalt pavements by recycling the asphalt and base materials in place, then mixing with cement and water, followed by compacting to produce a strong durable base. There is no need to haul in aggregate or haul out old material for disposal. Truck traffic is reduced, and there is little to no waste. “Our unit is ideal for this application,” he says.

Also designed for use in full-depth reclamation projects is the Asphalt Zipper, an asphalt reclamation and recycling attachment that can be connected to a loader bucket utilizing a patented hydraulic bucket-lock system and quick connect bucket slot. Also, because of its size, the Zipper can be transported on a trailer behind a standard pickup truck. The unit pulverizes asphalt into 1-inch-minus material that can be reused as road base or backfill. According to its manufacturers, it’s a portable, affordable alternative to larger, expensive milling machines. The unit can also be applied to street patches, full road repairs and utility trenches.

The City of Brownwood, TX, used the Asphalt Zipper on streets where many surface treatments had previously been applied. The crew began recycling the old asphalt and base material, and then employed a product called Cem-Lime, which is a 40% lime and a 60% Portland cement mixture, to create a new stabilized base material. The mixture was applied by the manufacturer of Cem-Line using a bulk spreader, and was then pulverized to a depth of 6 to 8 inches with the Asphalt Zipper. On a typical 600-foot-by-30-foot city street, this process would only take about 2.5 to 3 hours. Pulverizing, mixing, grading, and compacting were usually completed in one day, allowing the residents full use of the streets each evening. The street was left to cure for a couple of days, with a sealcoat then applied as a wearing surface. With only an occasional sealcoat treatment, the street should be solid and smooth for 10 or more years.

The result of this FDR process netted the city tens of thousands of dollars in savings over a two-year period during the reconstruction of 5 miles of streets. Throughout this project it was calculated that the FDR process could stabilize and reconstruct streets for only $2.68 per square yard versus $5.18 per yard if applying the traditional asphalt surface treatments.

Asphalt Zipper has just introduced a new 6-foot wide machine designed for front-end loaders which pulverizes asphalt up to 12-inch thick and 72-inch wide. It is rated to pulverize up to 5,500 square feet of 6- to 8-inch-thick asphalt per hour.

Another attachment designed for road recycling is the Fahr Roadcrusher, which is primarily targeted to forest road development and low-volume or secondary road resurfacing. Crushing rocks, concrete or asphalt, the unit can process about 940 to 1,050 cubic yards of material per mile while traveling at approximately 1,000 feet per hour.

According to Brian Bouley, marketing manager for Fahr Roadcrusher, the unit provides a much-needed alternative method to secondary road maintenance. He explains that, typically, maintenance crews come in with a grader and move the material back and forth to work out the finer materials left on the roadbed. Then they usually push the larger materials to the side forming a barrier between the ditch line and the road, or they simply push the material right into the ditch, causing drainage and erosion problems. “By using our machine, crews can simply windrow the road materials, and then use the Fahr Roadcrusher to crush the material in place. Then they grade it, roll it and compact it and leave it as it is. It creates a stable base, keeps the dust down, and is a more affordable substitute for asphalt,” he says.

Reclamation on the Small Job
Suited to the smaller job of 8,000 tons or less, the Eco-Crusher jaw crusher bucket attachment will fit onto any brand of excavator for the processing of concrete, bricks, blocks, basalt, aggregate, and more, while offering an optional magnet which will separate out rebar, steel, or copper pipe. Derived from a plumbing and excavation company with more than 45 years of experience, Giberson Enterprises LLC is the exclusive US distributor for the Eco-Crusher, which is manufactured by Meccanica Breganzese of Italy. “Our number-one customers are site contractors who want to recycle curbs, driveways, and foundations and reuse the material onsite as base fill,” says Larry Giberson, vice president of the company. “Its benefits are portability, convenience, and cost savings. Processing is cheaper per ton, as we are basically using a crusher in conjunction with the tracks on an excavator, rather than mobilizing everything associated with a track-mounted or portable crushing plant,” he adds.

Giberson estimates that 70% or more of all jobs in the nation can qualify as smaller projects. “From 1,000 tons to 8,000 tons has typically been the project size where the contractor loads the material on a truck and hauls it away. Now the Eco-Crusher has opened up that market for recycling and reuse onsite. While the portable crushing plant is marketed on tons per hour, our unit is all about lower costs per ton—and we will beat the portable crushing plant as to those numbers on every small job,” he says.

The Eco-Crusher line includes four models that fit excavators ranging from 18,000 to 110,000 pounds. Production rates range from 15 tons per hour on the smallest bucket up to 99 tons per hour on the largest. The bucket is designed to crush material with a maximum feed thickness of 15-inches-minus for recycle and 10-inches-minus for aggregate into an end product that ranges from 6 inches down to within 1 inch, depending upon the bucket size and the closed-side setting configuration. Its purchase price for the largest unit is approximately $105,000.

Multiprocessors Make Sense
Multiprocessors can literally multitask by performing multiple functions—such as cutting, crushing, pulverizing, and more—and can cut costs by eliminating the need for several specialized, single-purpose tools.

Caterpillar has recently introduced its new multifunctional Concrete Crusher P300 Series for hydraulic excavators. The P300 Series, models P315, P325, P335, and P360, extend the range of hydromechanical work tools. The hydraulic concrete crusher combines several concrete demolition operations into one piece of equipment: breaking out concrete from fixed structures, pulverizing concrete, and cutting reinforcement rods and small steel profiles. With a mounting bracket, this tool can exchanged among several carriers, and work tools can be swapped in seconds with the use of a quick-coupler.

Photo: Kenco Teichert Construction, Stockton District, California, makes use of the Kenco Pipe Lift.

Photo: IronWolf Asphalt Zipper has just introduced its new AZ-600B, which is capable of pulverizing a swath of asphalt 6-feet-wide and up to 12-inches thick

“Caterpillar customers now have access to a range of crushers with higher cost-effectiveness, flexibility, ease of use and functionality,” says David Becktel, commercial manager, Caterpillar Work Tools BV. “The hydraulic concrete crusher has taken modern demolition technology a step further, and because this equipment substantially limits the amount of vibration and noise, it is well suited to concrete demolition in residential areas,” he says.

LaBounty Universal Processors are designed to maximize the use of one attachment by using a variety changeable jaw sets. With six jaw sets to choose from, one unit can be used for concrete cracking, concrete pulverizing, scrap metal shearing, plate shearing, reinforced concrete processing, or wood shearing.

“With all the regulations where you can use recycled material and where dumping is limited, a product like this really makes sense. Contractors use multiprocessors for controlled demolition, as they are able to separate and process as they are demolishing, which really speeds up the project and makes it more efficient,” says Sal LaCorte, Great Lakes regional sales manager for LaBounty.

Regarding any misconceptions about the use of multiprocessors, LaCorte says that often contractors need to look deeper at the ownership and operating costs versus the purchase price. “You need to look into what you are saving and what you are processing, and the premium you can get from the sale of the processed materials or from their reuse. The return on investment far outweighs the purchase cost,” he says. “Also, some contractors think that the attachment is rough or detrimental to the carrier. In truth, the operator really determines the safety and health of both the tool and the carrier. Experience makes the difference,” he adds.

Preprocessing for Profit
Certainly one of the greatest benefits of stocking the right selection of reclamation and recycling attachments is that one operator and a single carrier can move from preprocessing and steel separation and on to crushing and screening to spec. In the preprocessing stage, breakers, hammers, pulverizers, and multiprocessors are integral.

The MCP series of hydraulic pulverizers, manufactured by Breaker Technology (BTI), is highly suited to secondary demolition and the recycling of concrete. The jaw’s design makes grabbing material on the ground or in a pile easy for the operator. Plus, the pulverizer easily separates steel from the concrete chunks.

Arizona-based Galaxy Materials purchased two MCP pulverizers, the MCP910 and the MCP1000, to extract rebar and other debris from raw material before it is crushed. The company receives demolition debris at its landfill site, recycles the concrete and asphalt into a marketable product, and sells the spec material to contractors in the region. Attached to Volvo trackhoes, these pulverizers have increased the amount of material crushed and sold per day, says Chad Beito, president of the company. “We crush approximately 2,000 tons per day, and it’s imperative that we are able to get the dumped concrete down to a manageable size and get it free of steel. We needed to utilize the right equipment in order to create a new product from dumped material and to make a profit from our efforts,” he says.

Photo: Breaker Technology The MCP Series of hydraulic pulverizers from Breaker Technology is targeted to secondary demolition and the recycling of concrete.

Photo: Caterpillar The Caterpillar P315 Multi-functional Concrete Crusher combines several concrete demolition operations into one piece of equipment.

Photo: Allied Construction The Contractor’s Mechanical Grapple from Allied Construction Products allows the operator to pick and place materials precisely.

Seiler Bros. Construction of Manitowoc, WI, uses Bobcat skid-steer loaders and excavators combined with Bobcat HB-Series breakers to speed up the process of removing and replacing concrete driveways, sidewalks, and foundations. In the HB Series are the first breakers designed for Bobcat compact equipment carriers to maximize efficiencies by matching the hydraulic capacity of the carrier to the breaker allowing consistent machine to breaker performance. “We have had no trouble breaking up floors a foot thick. We’re also using a drop-hammer attachment more and more on tougher concrete because it produces less vibration and noise than standard hydraulic breakers,” says owner Irv Seiler. “The most important factor these days is getting the job done quickly. That’s what our customers want. The excavators are faster than our loaders on some concrete demolition projects. With the hydraulic clamp, we can pick up broken concrete, swing it around and dump it right into the truck. That’s very efficient,” he adds.

Demolition of concrete structures, building foundations and pavement are many of the applications for the Model 70C AR Series hydraulic hammers manufactured by Allied Construction Products LLC. This line is built to meet the growing needs of the rental market and to offer an alternative and more affordable hydraulic hammer to contractors, says the company. The Model 70C is a 538-pound hammer that mounts quickly on a mini-excavator. Conversion brackets allow the hammer to be changed from loader/backhoes to skid steers in minutes.

Additionally, the Contractor’s Mechanical Grapples from Allied are used in all types of material handling, demolition, and dismantling operations. It’s mounted in place of the excavator bucket and operates off the bucket cylinder with no additional hydraulic requirements. It allows the operator to rip and tear down structures in a controlled environment; pick and place materials precisely; sort and separate materials; and load bulky materials fast and efficiently.

Methods such as in-place recycling and full-depth reclamation will only continue to gain ground as cost-effective green initiatives grow ever more popular. As such, manufacturers are delivering on greater tool versatility. Contractors should take a close look at what is offered and choose units that are properly sized for the carrier and for the widest range of recycling applications. Attachments are indeed going green—and green is good.