Raisch Products ~ Nothing Beats Custom Built by Kelly Gates
Any oversized material is sent on to a Cedar Rapids MVP 450, 400 hp cone crusher with a variable speed 12 cubic yard surge hopper, which is situated on the left side of the “V,” thus completing the closed circuit.
Raisch Products, of San Jose, CA, has been in operation since 1849, when the company first began managing road building projects in and around the San Francisco area. Over the years, the operation's owners took on other types of construction jobs, bridge-building work and even sold concrete ready mix. While the company no longer does bridge work - it dissolved that division in 1990 - Raisch Products is still a multifaceted business with several additional divisions to boot. “We operate asphalt plants, we do crushing and we also have quarries and a recycling division,” said Chuck Berry, plant operations manager for Raisch. “Our first recycling plant was actually built back in 1985. It produced around 1,000 tons per day, but took about three weeks to move from one location to another.” The plant served its purpose for the company for 10 years, but by then, it was time to trade up for a custom-built recycling plant that had a higher production capacity - and better mobility. Doug Raisch, who took the helm at Raisch Products in 1994, charged Berry and the company's two foremen, Robert Pope and Doug Woods, with the task of finding a more efficient system. According to Berry, the trio shopped around, searching for a company that could custom-design a plant that met the exact needs of the recycling division. Their main goals were to increase production from 1,000 to 3,500 tons and to reduce the amount of time it took to break down and move the plant from three weeks to three days. It took awhile to find a company capable of such a feat, but the persistent businessmen ultimately found one. “We commissioned the southern California Cedar Rapids dealer to design a plant with all Cedar Rapids equipment, which worked really well for us at the time,” said Berry. “We liked the plant so well that in 1998, we duplicated it, adding a few upgrades that weren't available when we had the first one built.” The two, nearly identical recycling systems were much more effective than the company's original plant. But as the division took on more recycling jobs and began routinely moving the equipment to new sites throughout the Northern California Bay Area, the mounting costs of down time and transporting the units from site to site eventually became overwhelming - reaching upwards of $40,000 per move in some instances. So, Berry, Pope and Rick Navarro were once again at the drawing board, trying to come up with a new design that was even more efficient than the custom-built systems they already owned. “We started traveling throughout the U.S., looking at different plants to see if there was already something out there that would meet all of our needs, but we never found it,” said Berry. “We wanted a portable recycle plant with the flexibility to do everything from produce finished aggregate for asphalt needs as well recycle concrete and process asphalt demolition.” The men wanted a plant with magnets and transfer points that would open up so they could set up a variety of configurations. The system also had to have components that could handle the rebar, trash and other things that come mixed in with recycled materials. Another wish was for crushers, screens and other equipment that could stand the test of time, lasting 20 to 30 years. After discovering that no such plant existed, they pulled out their notepads and started penciling draft after draft. “We met with Aggregate Machinery, Inc. and the company's head engineer, Rick Humpert, took the time to listen to our ideas,” said Berry. “By way of a yellow legal tablet we actually sat there for hours, and all of a sudden Rick drew a sketch perfect to the point. It was in the shape of a “V” and we coined the phrase The V-Series Plant.” At the intersect, or bottom of the V-shaped plant, Aggregate Machinery put a Cedar Rapids 3054 jaw crusher that is fed using a Cedar Rapids 52 X 20 grizzly with hydraulic folding wing walls on three sides, allowing for efficient rear feeding, along with a secondary rod deck under the grizzly section to facilitate reject ability. A Breaker Technology, Inc. pedestal mount breaker is in place above the jaw crusher to break apart larger material. Once the stone, asphalt or concrete passes through the crusher, it is transferred onto a Thunderbird 48 X 60 conveyor then feeds the crushed material to into a triple-deck Cedar Rapids 8 X 20 horizontal screen. Two additional conveyors are often directed across the screening machine to pull out custom-sized product for special orders. Any oversized material is sent on to a Cedar Rapids MVP 450, 400 hp cone crusher with a variable speed 12 cubic yard surge hopper, which is situated on the left side of the “V,” thus completing the closed circuit. A 150-foot Superior Telestacker is used to stockpile material, piling up to 120,000 tons of finished product from a single position. “The layout is perfect because from the intersect of the 'V,' we can take either side of the plant and skew it to the right or the left in order to make any configuration we want,” said Berry. “Because we also wanted to maximize time when moving the plant, we put hydraulics on everything. The conveyors fold using a unique center fold mechanism, and even catwalks raise and lower using hydraulics.” Another custom component is a 5 X 16 screen outfitted with an air knife, which is suitable for removing paper, plastic and other debris from incoming material after it is processed. The “air knife screen,” as Berry calls it, required a bit of out-of-the-box thinking in order to make it work for the array of applications Raisch Products commonly encounters. Instead of a 30-inch wide conveyor with a depth of 10-inches, the company went for a 5-foot wide screen that would carry 2-inches of material, said Berry. This allowed any lighter materials to be easily drafted away. “California state specs require us to produce an extremely clean product and because our operation is portable, we don't have the ability to float out the debris using washers,” he said. “So, we built in an air knife system.” The air knife is especially useful when processing asphalt containing petra mat, a fibrous material frequently used as an underlayment during the 1970s. The air knife screen has worked so well, the company is currently having a triple knife system built into a Cedar Rapids 6 X 20 screen. Frequency controllers on the new unit will be programmed to control each knife and, when completed, the unit will be capable of treating all three decks simultaneously. Berry expects the larger air knife screen to increase production of treated material from around 250 tons per hour to 450 tons per hour. In the spirit of designing their own equipment, Raisch Products also created a dual purpose sound suppressor/operator's tower. “We had a sound suppression system built into a 53-foot custom-built trailer with 6- inch thick walls and a vertically-installed exhaust that blows exhaust out the top, as well the radiator draft/noise” said Berry. The company had a custom-designed generator made using a Caterpillar 1,000 KW Gen Set and Automation Electric in Mount Vernon, WA, provided the electrical packaging for the custom unit. Raisch Products is currently using all of its new state-of-the-art, built-to-spec equipment on a recycling project in Fremont, CA, a job that has the company processing asphalt infused with petromat. The air knife screen has proven successful thus far, and production is holding steady at around 450 tons per hour. Without the air knife, the plant is capable of producing 700 tons per hour, and when the new triple knife screener is completed, production will fall somewhere in between, said Berry. “When we get our new 6 X 20 screens with the triple knife system, which we should have in the next six or seven weeks, we will be able to up production to 450 tons per hour when processing materials with petra mat and other debris, along with the existing 250 tons per hour with the 5' x 16' currently operating; totaling 700 tph.” he said. “All of this new equipment has made us so much more efficient and has saved us a lot of money too.” Indeed, instead of spending $40,000 and requiring 10 men and 19 loads to move a single plant, Raisch Products now needs five workers and around $7,500 to accomplish the task. The entire system can be relocated in six loads - or seven or eight loads when the air knife screens or other “add-on” units are needed. This is all done without the aid of cranes or forklifts, using only semi tractors to pull the loads. “The key for us has been designing just what we need,” said Berry. “It took a lot of time and planning, but it was certainly worth it.”
