Bucking the trend
A gypsum producer breaks industry tradition and goes portable with its crushing plant.
David Hornsby has visited a few gypsum plants across the western United States. All of the plants he’s visited have stationary crushing setups.
Hornsby’s dealer, Kimball Equipment’s Kirk Rainbolt, has only seen stationary gypsum crushing plants, as well.
“Probably 90 percent of all the gypsum mines in the U.S. are owned, controlled or operated by wallboard companies,” says David Hornsby, COO and president of Blue Diamond Hill Gypsum in Blue Diamond, Nev. “Most plants have been at it for a long time, so they have stationary plants.”
Blue Diamond is bucking the trend, though. Blue Diamond broke tradition within the last two years when it selected a portable Cedarapids CRH1316 horizontal shaft impact crusher from Terex Minerals Processing Systems (MPS) for its plant.
Blue Diamond also invested in a Cedarapids MVP450X cone crusher, a Canica VSI2000 vertical shaft impact (VSI) crusher and a Cedarapids LJ-TS horizontal screening plant to build a fleet for its gypsum mines.
“We’re a mining company selling gypsum as different crushed products,” says Hornsby, who estimates Blue Diamond’s plant produces 750 tph. “We’re about going into the different mines here, and if we acquire other operations, maybe we move the plant or buy another portable plant and use them between two or three operations.”
Regardless of whether or not Blue Diamond expands onto other properties, portability makes sense within the company’s existing site. According to Hornsby, the site in Blue Diamond, Nev., contains 36 mines and stretches about 11 miles. Portability gives the operation the ability to mine one area for a period of time and eventually move its plant to another area on the property.
“There are some other gypsum plants here in Las Vegas that crush with a primary crusher and convey material a mile or two over open land,” says Rainbolt, general manager at Kimball Equipment. “You can do it that way, but there’s an expense to getting it from the face.
“With Blue Diamond, they’ve moved this plant to wherever the face is. That’s unusual.”
Start me up
According to Hornsby, Blue Diamond’s mine is the oldest active mine in Nevada. The Blue Diamond Mining Co. was the name of the original company that started on site in 1902, Hornsby says, and the company changed hands several times over the 20th century.
In 2002 – 100 years after the mining company first formed – Jim Rhodes, a Las Vegas homebuilder, purchased the mine property. Rhodes originally had plans to build thousands of homes in the area, Hornsby says, because the views on one side of the property were scenic while the other side of the property featured Las Vegas.
But the recession put a halt to Rhodes’ plans, and the mine property was dormant for 10 years.
It remained dormant until 2012, when Rhodes decided to re-launch the mining operation.
“He didn’t have much background in mining,” Hornsby says, “but he did a national search and ended up with me out here.”
Hornsby was tasked with designing a new crushing plant. As a co-owner of his own mining company in Oregon and Washington, Hornsby had experience with portable crushing plants.
“We were familiar with portable equipment and all of our employees were familiar with it,” he says. “We were good at tearing down plants, putting them back together and moving them. We did a lot of portable paving and timber work.”
Hornsby knew he wanted to go portable upon arriving at Blue Diamond.
“We wanted to quickly move the plant around here because it’s a 2,000-acre property,” he says. “We wanted to move the plant to the material.”
Hornsby selected Terex MPS equipment because a number of the employees he brought with him from his own mining company were familiar with the Cedarapids brand.
“It was kind of a no-brainer,” he says. “They knew all of the programs. We probably brought about 11 people down. Now we’ve got three left. When I started they had three guys here. We now have 60.”
Blue Diamond hasn’t moved its plant yet, but Hornsby figures the operation will shift production elsewhere on the property sometime next year.
“That’s when we’ll make our first move,” he says. “Based on our past history – and this is a bigger plant than we’ve ever had – it will take us about a week to tear down everything, [disconnect] all the electrical, roll up all the cords, get the brakes back working and hooking up and moving the equipment. Then, setting it back up will be about a two-week process. So three weeks in total probably.”
Adjustments already made
Blue Diamond has made some adjustments to its plant already – even without having moved it once.
“We added the cone (Cedarapids MVP450X) this year,” Hornsby says. “We have two products we create. There’s a coarse product and a fine product. We were originally getting more of the fine product than coarse, which is how we originally designed the plant.”
But market demands changed, dictating Blue Diamond deliver more coarse material.
“Our projections from the beginning were 60 percent fine, 40 percent coarse,” Hornsby says. “Our customer base flipped – it’s now 60 percent coarse and 40 percent fine.”
According to Hornsby, the operation’s Canica VSI2000 is best at producing finer material. So the Cedarapids MVP450X was added.
“It has as good or better production with lower maintenance costs than the VSI,” Hornsby says. “Now, the VSI only runs when we need it to for a third product, which is very fine.”
Rainbolt adds that the systematic change was more manageable because Blue Diamond’s setup is portable.
“If you’re in a permanent application it’s tough to change,” he says.