John Bennington, product manager for washing and classifying equipment at Superior Industries, sat down with Portable Plants to discuss the latest trends in washing and classifying. Bennington detailed how washing and classifying equipment and technology arrived to where it is today, what producers want out of their equipment, and what the future holds.
How has washing and classifying equipment evolved in the last decade-plus?
Probably the biggest thing I’ve seen in the last decade is that everything keeps getting bigger. When I started back in the ‘90s, it was pretty common to sell 8-ft. x 30- or 32-ft. tanks. Those rarely get sold anymore. They’re all 10-ft. x 40-ft. tanks or 12-ft. x 48-ft. tanks – and multiples of those.
We have a customer in Texas that has four classifying tanks operating together because of the volume of water and tonnage they’re doing. Those are four 12-ft. x 48-ft. tanks. They’re capable of handling over 16,000 gallons per minute of water.
There is also some work being done with diagnostics to not only help you make your product, but it gives you some warning as to when things are starting to wear out. Classifying tanks use solenoids and hydraulic units, so it can let you know when the solenoid is starting to wear out and needs to be replaced. Or when the oil viscosity is getting too high or needs to be changed or cleaned. That diagnostic element is something we’ve been hearing a lot about.
Being able to let producers know when things are going to go wrong before they do [is key] so they can get a jump on it and minimize downtime.
What is driving this trend toward bigger equipment?
A lot of metro areas don’t have any deposits close to the city, so material has to be trucked or train-loaded in from farther away. So, what you’re seeing is a concentration of production.
Our customer in Texas is probably an hour or an hour and a half away from Dallas, but they have a decent deposit. So, if you have the material, you’re going to make as much of it as you can, as fast as you can.
Also, in the last few years, we got the new road bill, and I think that obviously helped. There are a lot more projects being done because of that.
What have you been hearing from customers lately as far as what they want from their washing and classifying equipment?
They want it so they don’t have to pay much attention to it. They want it to do its job.
As plants have gotten bigger and as products have gotten harder to make, plants have gotten a good deal more complicated. Some plants are going all the way down to quaternary crushing, they have a dozen screens in them. The washing equipment and all of these pieces have to go together and do their job.
When one machine upstream can mess the whole plant up, they want them to be reliable. They want them to tell them when they’re going to have a problem and they want to be able to turn it on and let it do its job. Everybody still wants the biggest bang for their buck, but they also want reliability and information.