Ace Equipment Sales was able to design and engineer a conveyor system with tripper cars that allows Hunters Point Recycling to operate a full service materials processing center within a 30,000 sq. ft. lot.
Hunters Point Recycling is a demolition and construction materials recycling facility located at 29-55 Hunters Point, Long Island City, N.Y.
Servicing four boroughs of New York City — Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens — Hunters Point Recycling is currently accepting dirt, rock and concrete, from which it is producing screened fill and item 4 aggregate. In addition to the items it produces, Hunters Point also inventories bulk sand, ¾ in. blue stone, ¾ in. clean stone and cold patch.
The facility was started by a New York City area contractor who needed a better and more convenient method of reusing recyclable materials such as concrete for his own business, and once he had built the facility, decided to open it up to other area contractors.
The company has been in business for a little over a year, and the demand for materials grew rapidly, which caused the need to stockpile more recycled material an obvious issue. However, the challenge for expansion is that it needed to occur within Hunters' confined 30,000 sq. ft. lot.
A recycling facility that needs space for truckloads of materials to come in, room for stockpiles of unprocessed materials, a jaw crusher, an impact crusher, wheel loaders to load out material, and excavators to load material, does not leave a lot of room to expand stock piles of finished, processed material.
One solution would have been to make the existing stockpiles, which are confined by two storage bins, taller. However, with Hunter Point Recycling's existing methodology, the extent to which it could make the piles taller was limited by the reach and the capacity of its loaders.
The answer came from John Patton, owner of Ace Equipment Sales Inc., an aggregate plant design specialist in Willington, Conn., in the form of one word: “conveyors.”
According to Joe Pego at Hunters Point Recycling, “within a few weeks of evaluating our situation, John and his staff developed a custom designed tripping-conveyor modular system, which allows us to pile 5,400 square yards [approximately 8,000 tons] of processed material. Prior to this system, we were only able to store one-third of that. Ace Equipment Sales Inc. was able to design and deliver a product that saves us a ton of money in fuel and labor, that is also perfectly suited for our site.”
The new conveying system stands 30 ft. high and 80 ft. long, with bays that are 40 ft. wide, each. The unique, custom design and engineered tripper car system allowed Ace to build off the side of Hunters Point Recycling's building, with a vertical design, which allowed the system to take up far less space in the confined 30,000 sq. ft. lot.
The system is designed to move two different materials: the screened fill and the Item 4 aggregate. The materials are conveyed to the top of the system, then tripper cars, which are controlled by an easy-to-use control lever, direct the material into the appropriate bin.
Ace Equipment used its three-dimensional design software, Autocad's Inventor, to provide a complete in-house three-dimensional design for Hunters Point Recycling to review.
This cutting-edge technology allows Ace Equipment to model locations and equipment ahead of time to determine whether or not machines and equipment can fit on the job sites, which is ideal for the confined working restrictions within the city, allowing it to not only provide a fast and efficient quote to its customers, but to also have a precise plan as to how its equipment will fit in advance of fabrication and installation.
“Originally, they were going to shut down but their workload didn't allow it so we needed to erect this whole plant while they continued to bring material in and process it. They never missed a day,” Patton said.
Ace Equipment has now incorporated drone photography and site-surveys into its design capabilities. As well as giving accurate work areas for processing and stockpiling, the drone surveys are able to calulate stockpile volumes. The drone photography and video services allow an excellent view and recording of troublesome transition areas so the issues can be identified and fixed.
The company's Willington location gives it a large reach in the New England/New York area. Intersected by I-84, it is 20 mi. from the Mass. Pike or Interstate 91, 90 mi. from downtown Boston and 120 mi. from the Bronx.
For more information, call 860/429-2793, 860/429-0460 or 860-429-0542 or e-mail jpatton@acecrushers.com.
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