Sometimes you might need to continue to reduce the size of your crushed material, and a tertiary reduction may be desired (sometimes even further). Particle sizes range from 5″ to 1″ during this final stage. Tertiary crushing is highly valuable in the mineral processing industry. The degree to which a material is reduced largely depends on how fine the material’s final size should be. More stages of crushing = smaller-sized products. For tertiary crushing, you will most likely need a smaller impactor or cone crusher.

Screening and multiple crushing sequences can also limit material waste. Some common tools used during the process are:

Screening Equipment: If a piece of material is too large for the crushing machine to effectively handle, it must be removed. Screening equipment removes any material that will slow the production process. It sorts and classifies materials by size using a series of screens with different-sized openings. These openings, or grids, allow small rocks to move along and large rocks to be excluded. If the material does not fit through the openings, it will be excluded from the next phase of the reduction process. Then, it is either sent back into the crushing process for further size reduction or removed completely from production. Screening equipment is crucial to an effective tertiary crushing operation, as large materials can take up needed space and consume valuable energy, creating delays and costing money.

Conveyors: Moving raw materials and reduced materials from one stage of production to the next can be incredibly time-consuming. Modern mining and material handling methods now include extensive conveyor systems that can sometimes cover many miles. There are two basic kinds of conveyors: powered and gravity. Powered conveyors utilize energy from an outside source, whereas gravity conveyors use the material’s weight to propel them.