“As an engineer I was deployed to a Dolerite stone quarry, hard pressed to keep up production to feed the local demand. The nature of this particularly hard stone was taxing on the machinery involved, which ran non-stop for 16 hours per day. The swing arm jaw crusher in particular, with its 8-ton swing arm needed to be removed by hand every 2 weeks with a block and tackle to replace the 250mm diameter phosphor bronze bearings that it pivoted on. Vesconite was called in to design and manufacture replacement bushes, which were fitted on the next shut down. After 6 weeks of continuous running, the Vesconite bushes showed no signs of wear, and with far less lubrication involved it resulted in a 15% increase in production. The bushes were only replaced after a year of use.”
