Home-Built Rock Crusher

Home-Built Rock Crusher MISCELLANEOUS EQUIPMENT Miscellaneous 9-3-9 Frank Ray adds lots of lime to his fields near Winfield, Kan., and, rather than buy it he decided to build his own rock crusher and go into the business. The resulting machine crushes 30 to 50 ton of rock per hour and weighs over 15,000 lbs. Ray has lots of high calcium rock on his farm suitable for making ag lime. He simply dynamites it out of the ground, runs it through his crusher and sells it to neighbors who apply it to fields at the rate of 3 to 10 ton per acre. The crusher consists of a heavy 8-ft. dia. crushing wheel 44 in. wide with heavy metal cross bars that break the rock into pieces no larger than a pea. The crushed rock is dumped out onto a conveyor belt that carries it away to a storage pile. Crushing wheel can handle rocks up to about the size of a watermelon. The crusher wheel is driven by a large, 15-ft. dia. flywheel that's belt-driven off a large engine-driven pulley. Ray built every part of the crusher himself including all the pulley drives on the conveyors and crusher. The huge crushing wheel is mounted in a heavy metal housing. When rocks are dropped in the top they're crushed by the ever-narrowing margin of the housing. The wheel just barely clears the housing at the bottom,crushing the rock to powder. The crushing wheel spins at about 60 rpm's. The end plates of the wheel are 1 1/4-in. thick steel welded to the shaft. The metal crushing bars are made from 2¢ by 5 in. steel.

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