Canadian jaw supplier gets its teeth into the Australian market
Foothills Steel Foundry is a family-owned and -run company based in Calgary, Canada. Foothills has decades of experience, specialising in the manufacture of wear-resistant manganese and alloy steels, and an extensive catalogue of jaw, gyratory and cone crusher wear parts.
Being the manufacturer, Foothills has a unique opportunity to work with crushing outfits to tailor wear parts requirements to machines and crushing environments and offer their own ‘triple crown’ design on most jaws. The triple crown tooth has three distinct crushing faces, providing improved performance throughout the life of the jaw. Foothills also offers a filled-in end on most jaws allowing more wear to occur before replacement; extending jaw life significantly – especially in recycling or other high-abrasion environments – and provides all jaws in standard and high-range manganese.
Further good news for Australian operators is that Foothills Steel Foundry has now expanded operations into Australia, opening its first sales office and warehouse in Queensland in August 2008.
Harry Irving, Foothills President, said “The recent awarding of crusher wear parts supply contracts from large North American cement manufacturers and an increase in manufacturing capacity has meant that we are in a position to expand into the international market place.”
“The mining and construction growth that Australia has seen over the past few years made it an obvious choice for an overseas location.”
The Canadian parent company has been manufacturing crusher wear parts for over sixty years. In this time they have been the wear part and cast mainframe original equipment manufacturer (OEM) for Nordberg/Metso, Lippmann, JCI and ElJay crushers.
“The experience gained in conjunction with crusher manufacturers has enhanced our entire product catalogue. We can now offer custom teeth and crushing profiles as well as the original manufacturer design,” said Sales Manager, Matt Irving.
“Being the manufacturer and not just a reseller gives Foothills the unique ability to work with crusher operators to customise the wear parts to their requirements.”
For the last few North American crushing seasons, Foothills Steel Foundry has worked in association with LoneTrack Equipment Ltd to redesign and extend the life of their jaw plates.
LoneTrack is based in British Columbia, Canada, producing aggregate from recycled concrete, asphalt and round river rock using Extec C12 and C12+ jaw crushers.
Don Rand, Operations Manager of LoneTrack, says “The results of the design and testing process with Foothills have produced up to a 50% increase in wear life.”
“The standard Extec jaws are quite flat, with shallow teeth. The extra material alone in the Foothills jaw is a major contributor to the better performance and decreased throwaway.”
Foothills have added more curve to the Extec C12 jaw. The curve raises the initial impact zone closer to the centre of the manganese liners, instead of wearing the ends of the jaws like the classic OEM tooth design. This allows more material throughput before the customer loses adjustment on their nip angle, reducing the overall cost per tonne.
“We have also added a deeper, more aggressive tooth style in the jaws,” said Matt Irving. “The C12 jaws come with Foothills’ own triple-crown design tooth, with three distinct crushing faces. To help with abrasion loss commonly found in asphalt recycling, Foothills have also added smooth, filled in ends to both ends of the stationary jaw. With the right combination of curve, tooth depth, and a high-range grade of manganese, we have developed what we believe to be a more versatile, increased wear life liner for the Extec line of machinery. So far, customer trials support our own confidence in these innovations.”
The full Foothills product range is now available in Australia.
Categories
- Foothills are certified “safe, efficient and effective” as we achieve our ISO9001 Certification and our COR Certification
- Globally recognised as a leader in the manufacture and supply of castings and fabrications that are unsurpassed in quality and integrity.
- Our evolution from simple, small castings and forgings into global large scale high performance castings and fabrications
- Why do our wear parts outlast the competition?
- Technology and Experience makes Foothills the leaders in their field