Trap Rock Quarry Case History

A Wisconsin quarry owner successfully uses the Surestrike hammer to break oversize rock in their 100 year old quarry.

The model 4000 Surestrike hammer is excavator mounted and easily breaks the 75,000 to 100,000 PSI compressive strength boulders that are made during the blasting process. The rock is very hard and has an LA rating of about 7.8. Previously, the quarry owner had used a 12,000 # drop ball/cross mounted to a crane to break the rock. This was a slow and inefficient process. The crane was slow to cycle and many times the ball/cross missed its target. When it did make a good hit, there was much fly rock and sharp pieces were driven into the ground. These sharp pieces were very hard on loader tires during the clean up process. This quarry owner also tried many different types of hydraulic hammers. Because of the hardness of the rock, not even the largest of the hydraulic hammers would efficiently break the rock.

The Surestrike hammer provided high productivity and an efficient and safe operation to reduce the oversize rock. The Surestrike hammer is not producing the sharp pieces so loader tire life is vastly improved. The operator finds it easy to manufacture rocks of a desired size for rip rap applications or to break the 8’ x 8’ rock into 24” – 30” minus to feed to their jaw crusher with no plugging problems.