Dampry Cat 775G in Měrunice quarry

You don’t see a hundred and ten tons on four wheels every day. In the basalt quarry in Měrunice, two Cat 775G fixed dumpers are transporting material. Tomáš Hrdina, the head of the operation, showed us how the machines work directly in the quarry.

Basalt Měrunice

The Měrunice quarry is located in the Ústí nad Labem Region. The Basalt company has been mining basalt here since 1994. It followed the company Severokámen Liberec, which has been mining aggregates here since 1987. Basalt is a grey-black, volcanic igneous rock that is an extremely durable and hard material with a fine-grained structure. Crushed aggregate from the Měrunice quarry has excellent physical and mechanical properties and limited water absorption, which guarantees exceptional frost resistance. Aggregate is used in concrete mixtures, water management structures and for the production of special construction mixtures.

“Let’s look at it from above”,

says fifty-three-year-old Tomáš Hrdina and takes us to the very edge of the quarry. Below us, there is a crater of six stages with a height of 12 metres each. In the deepest one, in the underground water seeping to the surface of the quarry, a dredger is scooping up the rubble. From here a solid road leads to the processing plant, whose building encloses the whole area. In the middle of the road we just pass two yellow, and even from this distance recognizable machines – fixed dumpers Cat 775G.

The choice fell on Cat machines

The Cat dumpers arrived in Měrunice only recently as part of a large package of fifteen Caterpillar machines that the German quarry owner secured together with Zeppelin’s headquarters in Germany.

Part of the equipment was supplied by the Czech dealer Zeppelin CZ, specifically the branch in Most. Tomáš Hrdina, who is in charge of the fleet at the Měrunice, Všechlapy and Libá quarries, is responsible for the choice of Cat machines.

“Do you enjoy the new dampers?”

“I still enjoy them,” he says, describing the worries their predecessors brought him. Because of service failures, they often had to reduce or even stop operations altogether. The new Cat 775G dumpers are said to be able to cope not only with the increase in monthly production from 50,000 to 100,000 tons but also save thousands of litres of fuel due to the more economical mode of the engines. The Cat 775G rigid dumpers are perfect for working in crushed aggregate or limestone quarries, where the ground is hard and rear axle drive is sufficient.

Source: Lomy a těžba

Published: 27.6.2021