FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS (FAQ) ABOUT THE CRAZY CRUSHER
WHAT IS THE CRAZYCRUSHER DESIGNED FOR?
The CrazyCrusher is designed to crush and grind ore for
sampling, either in the lab or out in the field. Since it is manually operated, there is no need to haul gas or a
generator to run it. It is nice and quite and can be operated where there is a fire ban from running gas operated
equipment. It is not designed as a “production” unit although it can be used to crush down high-grade
ore to extract fine free-milling gold, or hi-grade silver ores for processing.
WHAT ELSE CAN IT BE USED FOR?
Other than crushing ore, the CrazyCrusher has been used by
geologists for mineral testing as well as those who have small batches (100 or so) CPU chips to crush and liberate
the gold pins, etc. It has been used to break up rock into sizes suitable for tumbling for jewelry and arts and
crafts. It has been used to make “frit”: that is, rice sized colored glass used in the process of
coloring glass for glass-blowing and glazing. It can also easily crush clear clean glass to be used in smelting
operations. It can also be used to re-grind hardened chunks of clay. Others break minerals to make mineral collection and sample sets.
Some have ground up colored minerals to produce special artist paint pigments. It's being used to crush charcoal for
garden soil, and the list goes on!
WHERE IS IT MADE, AND OF WHAT?
The CrazyCrusher is 100 percent Made in the USA. It is made
of 100% steel. All bolts are of 1/2-13 in size and Grade 5 for strength. The side plates are 3/16” and the jaws are
of 3/8” steel. We are located in Bullhead City, Arizona.
HOW DO YOU HARDEN THE JAWS?
Each jaw plate starts out with welding stringers across
their faces, using 70,000lbs tensile strength for hardness. The welds not only make for a harder surface, the welds also act as something to help grip
the rock edges and bring it down further into the jaws. The upper 3-1/2” inches of the moving jaw
has angled teeth welded on in a vertical position to help with getting that first “crack” of
a rock easier. It is then fired in an oven to 1650 deg F, and then quenched in a brine called “super quench”
which gives the jaws a hardening of about a Rockwell 45. (or about a 7.5 on the Mohs scale).
The welded stringers also is the first thing that would wear down, instead of the actual jaw material.
In the grinding stages, when the moving jaw actually scrapes across the bottom of the adjustable jaw,
there will be some wear, but since the adjustable jaw "is" adjustable with a 1/2” bolt, the jaws will
always be a tight match.
WHAT SIZE ROCK CAN IT HANDLE?
This depends on what the rock is. The harder the rock,
the better it is if it is smaller than larger. Even two pieces of the same host rock can crush differently,
depending on existing cracks, inclusions or impurities. Things like marble and caliche` can crush very easily,
where quartz with little impurities or inclusions will crush harder. As a general rule of thumb, rocks crushed
should be the size of, or less than the size of a standard ice cube or chicken egg. It's easier to crush just a couple at
a time with the jaws ½ way open, and then re-run the material a 2nd or 3rd time, until the desired
size is achieved.
WHAT IS THE OUTPUT SIZE?
When the adjustable jaw is fully open, you will have
about a ½ inch gap. This does not mean that everything that passes will be 1/2”. Some chips
will be, others will be far less. Two or three passes will take the ore down to a maximum of about 20 mesh,
and some of the material will be so fine it will be air-borne dust. When grinding, the particles actually
crush against each other, as well as with the jaws.
Test Results for grinding with the Crazycrusher:
Scale used: Lyman Ohaus D5 Balance Beam grain scale (Measures down to 1/100th of a grain)
Sample weight: 451.2 grain (Crushed to minus 1/8th inch to start)
First grind:
226 gr. did not pass through the 20 mesh screen
117.4 gr. passed through the 20 mesh but not the 100 mesh
53.4 gr. passed through the 100 mesh.
Difference in weight is 107.75 gr which accounts for:
1: Powdered material that was so fine to be air borne and did not settle in the catch bowl.
2: Powdered material that did not come loose from the pan while tapping it into another pan.
3: Powdered material that remained inside the crusher on the welds of the jaws and other parts.
I did not do a second grind pass, and I did not have a screen finer than 100 mesh, however if one
is getting material so fine to be air borne, there is the assumption that perhaps 25 percent of
that which did pass through the 100 mesh screen is in the range of 200 to 400 mesh.
WHAT IF I WANT TO USE IT FOR SOME OTHER PURPOSE?
If you have an idea as to using the
CrazyCrusher for something other than ore, or anything mentioned above, please contact us at
sales@crazycrusher.com with your intentions for the use of the CrazyCrusher.
By contacting us first, we may be able to tell you if it will work or not for your intended purposes. We
strive for customer satisfaction and would rather lose a sale than have an unhappy customer!
WHAT IF THE JAWS WEAR OUT, OR SOMETHING BREAKS?
Good question! As stated above, every
effort has been taken to assure the durability of the CrazyCrusher. Since the crusher made its debut
in September of 2010, several changes have been made. One primary change was in the way that the adjuster worked.
The early models had a weakness and that has been addressed and now has a adjuster box with a ½ inch
bolt for adjusting and have not had a re-occurring problem with it since. If something should break
on the crusher we WANT to hear about it! This is the only way we can learn of any weaknesses, and to correct it,
should one arise. We stand behind our product, and want you, the customer to be satisfied as best we can.
We do not stock “spare parts”, since now, we have had no reports of anything failing on the Crazycrusher. However, if needed, we can easily manufacture a part as a replacement.
HOW LONG WILL THE JAWS LAST?
This depends again, on how often it is used, and what
is being crushed. Crushing a quart of marble stone once a month, the jaws will last forever. Crushing
quartz for an hour every day will show wear on the welds first. The crusher is designed to be dis-assembled
in the event at some time down the road the weld stringers on the jaw faces wear off. At that point, it would
be far easier and cheaper to remove the jaws and just run some welding stringers across the face again.
Your option would be be remove the jaws and ship them back to be re-welded. Should the vertical teeth wear
down, they would either have to be replaced if the crusher fails to crush as well as it did.
Earlier models did not have the teeth, but just stringers welded on the face of the moving jaw,
and it still worked quite well.
I have seen what happens when one falls off a truck on a gravel road
at about 50mph. It still worked fine, other than a leg was twisted 90 degrees and scratched up pretty bad.
I think it will last for your kids and grandkids to grow up and use it!
HOW CAN I MOUNT IT MORE STURDIER?
The CrazyCrusher, in order for it to work properly
and effectively, it needs to be mounted to a sturdy work bench when in the lab or garage. If there is movement
of the whole rock crusher (or the bench) when moving the handle up and down, that movement will take away the
effectiveness of the crusher,and lose resistance, which makes it harder to use. We do sell a hitch mount for the back of a vehicle
with a 2 inch receiver. (If you want one, and your hitch is smaller than 2 inches, we can special make one
for your crusher.) Even with the hitch mount, you may well be bouncing the whole vehicle up and down. This
is not good, and the hitch mount must have an additional support between the hitch mount and the ground to
avoid the movement. A piece of 4x4 wood between the ground and hitch mount works wonders!
Other methods while in the field is to mount the crusher to a parallel set of 2x4's
leaving a couple of extra feet longer, and you can drive your vehicle tire on to the extended 2x4's,
thus using the weight of your vehicle to make the crusher sturdy. Others have used large spikes and
temporarily mounted the crusher to a tree stump, or even a dead downed tree. If you are in the field
and packed in the crusher, and there are no stumps or downed trees to use, again you can use the 2x4's
and roll the largest rock you can move on to the extended 2x4's, or someone can stand on the end.
HOW DOES THE CRAZYCRUSHER WORK?
It works on the simplest ancient method of
the “lever”. There is a pivot point and a guide point that is very close in relationship
to the overall length of the arms. The guide pin follows an arc in the path of the radius from the
pivot point. When the handle is in the down position, the jaws are at their closest. When the handle
is fully raised the jaws are further apart at the top of the crusher, but remains nearly the same at
the bottom of the jaws. Raising the handle and them coming down with it, the movable jaw moves slightly
forward but mostly downward, putting both pressure on the rock in a horizontal plane, and also in
a vertical plane. It's always suggested to leave the handles in the down position, place the rock
in it, then slightly raise the handle to “grip” the rock, and the downward movement exerts
enough pressure to crack and break the rock in to various sized pieces. Starting in the full up
position, and with a very hard dense rock, it may not break as easily, if at all. It's not perfect, but
by far easier and safer than the old pipe in a pipe method, or a big hammer, (you're gonna take
an eye out!), or the small pestle and mortar).
WHY DOES IT SOMETIMES TAKE SO LONG TO SHIP AFTER I ORDER?
We started out on a shoestring.
We own the business free and clear and we want to keep it that way!
Our plan is to grow, as our sales grows. Slow, steady and without debt. Some start-up companies go all
out only to fail because they got too big for their britches as it were.
We acquired all the needed tools and equipment to manufacture the CrazyCrusher as simple as we could.
Sure, a CNC lathe and a 5x10 Waterjet would be nice, but that adds big-time to expenses, and so does labor. Every
other “jaw crusher” out there is motorized and runs $1,000 minimum, and I've seen some
small crushers for the lab run as much as $4,000! I just don't know how they can justify those prices!
We wanted to produce a product that will crush rock for testing and sampling and not cost an arm and
a leg!
There is cutting, grinding, turning and thread cutting, drilling, welding, hardening, then more grinding,
sanding, finishing, filing, cleaning and painting. Then reassemble and prep it for packaging, boxing
it all up, printing out the required papers, and finally, either having the carrier pick up, or deliver
them to the carrier for shipping.
We try to make sub assemblies in advance when we can but that is not always possible. We use several
jigs to expedite some tasks. All we ask is that you are somewhat patient with us!
HOW DO YOU SHIP, AND WHAT DOES IT COST?
Shipping to the lower 48 states is FREE!
We ship GROUND via UPS or FedEx. Shipments to Alaska and Hawaii are very discounted, and we discount to Canada
and Mexico. Discounts world wide with U.S.P.S., Given the shipping weight, (38 lbs for the crusher, 48 lbs if you also purchase
the hitch mount), we will always opt for ground carrier.
.
WHERE DO YOU SHIP TO?
Most anywhere actually. If it's legal to ship there.
STILL HAVE QUESTIONS? Submit them to sales@crazycrusher.com (Oh, and if you see any typos, I'd appreciate the heads up!)
ORDER HERE!
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