An HP 5000 digs out some porphyry
The word “porfido (Italian for porphyry) conjures up pictures of Trentino-Alto Adige, where the stone has been quarried and cut for centuries. And there in Italy’s northernmost region, Quarry and Construction visited a quarry just outside Albiano, to see how an Indeco HP 5000 deals with porphyry.
The site belongs to the Silpa Srl firm, which has been one of the major mining companies on the local scene for over 40 years. Meeting reporters at the quarry was Andrea Filippi, one of Silpa’s directors, an expert on porphyry and everything connected with it.
When asked “Why an Indeco HP 5000?, Andrea Filippi replied: “We needed a big machine to break off the blocks of porphyry and cut them so that they could be loaded onto trucks and taken to be shaped: we trusted Indeco quality and the after-sales assistance that the company promised us. There is so much work to do here and machine down-times are a big problem: it was becoming vital to be able to rely on 360° support from the dealer. Given the type and quantity of rock, we went for an HP 5000, which works in combination with a 90-t New Holland E385 B carrier. We extract over twenty tons of porphyry per day: the breaker is active five-six hours a day at most, because it is so efficient and powerful that it only takes a few minutes to cut the stone down to size.
All Indeco breakers are “intelligent because they automatically adjust their frequency and energy per blow to the nature of the rock that needs demolishing. With rocks as hard as porphyry, this breaker reduces, for example, the frequency of the blows, while at the same time increasing operating energy. Another key point in such applications is robustness, an aspect Indeco has focused highly on, ensuring both greater stress-resistance and the ability to deal with higher working pressures and oil deliveries.
With the HP system, Indeco have managed to optimise the hydraulic performance of the system, making it easier to fine-tune the breaker, significantly increasing the power delivered and improving the frequency and energy per blow. Other crucial features include the dual shock-absorption system, the quick-change interchangeable bushing and the centralised greasing system, all of which of course significantly reduce maintenance costs. In addition, the quality of the materials used is of huge importance, such as the special low-alloy steels which greatly lengthen the average working life of the most important breaker components.
What happens to all of the porphyry which the big Indeco breaker quarries on the Silpa site? All of the material is shaped and transformed into a wide variety of products. Andrea Filippi reminds us that “Silpa deals with the whole porphyry production line, from extraction to the finished product: cubes for flooring, kerbstones, slabs, flagstones, steps, a bit of everything. With the HP 5000 we manage to extract material for all these types of product. Porphyry is a wonderful rock, but you need to know how to treat it properly: then it becomes so resistant to freezing and thawing that it never needs to be repaired. The porphyry from this area, as well as being compact, is a particularly lovely purply shade of red, which increases its commercial value.
Zoom: Silpa Srl
Silpa Srl was founded in 1964 in Albiano, near Trento. Over the last 44 years, the firm has specialised in extracting and cutting porphyry, which has led to the creation of a huge range of quality products which will last over time. All of the cutting and shaping phases are supervised by the production managers, in order to ensure the robustness and resilience of the rock, but also the elegance and craftsmanship of the finished products.
