Hamm Quarries notes the versatility of portability

by Kelly Gates

PERRY, KS — Hamm, Inc. has been in operation since 1939 when its main focus was on custom combining farmers’ fields in Texas, Canada and everywhere in between. As the company’s founder, Norman Ray Hamm, worked with his clients he realized they had needs that went far beyond harvesting help.

Many needed assistance making ponds for their livestock, so Hamm purchased one of the first bulldozers in the state of Kansas and began digging. He also opened quarries to provide lime for their fields, selling the remaining limestone products to contractors throughout the northwestern region of Kansas.

Easy access throughout for
maintenance and pinless jacklegs
for quick set up and leveling.

Looking down the throat
of a MaxCap 600.

The company eventually expanded into heavy duty road construction with a fleet of dozers, scrapers and other equipment,” said Jim Bogner, production consultant for Hamm Quarries. “Hamm also has an asphalt paving division and a solid waste landfill.”

The quarry division, which consists of 82 different sites in Kansas and Nebraska, makes up nearly a third of Hamm’s business. Contracting work totals about 25 percent, the landfill represents another 25 percent and asphalt the remainder.

Getting the plant set up and
put into operation.

Portable Universal 150/150 NGS with optional
third curtain and inline conveyors.

Managing such a multifaceted business takes a team of more than 350 employees, including several third generation Hamm family members, said Bogner, who personally helps oversee each and every quarry location currently in operation.

One of the things that helps facilitate aggregate mining at Hamm is versatility. According to Bogner, having the flexibility to adjust equipment positioning, production capacity and quarry set-up at the drop of a hat is vital to efficient production.

“Being able to relocate equipment from one quarry to another is very important to us, so we always look for machines that are highly portable,” he told NAQN. “But, we don’t just need crushers and other processing equipment that can be moved around, they must also be very durable.”

This Universal Engineering Corp. plant
was custom-designed to be not only sturdy
and mobile, but also capable of being
adjusted on the fly.

The Universal crushers that were selected
for Hamm’s new plants were the MaxCap 600,
a 600 tph primary impactor, and the
150/150 NGS (next generation)

Finding units that fit both criteria is challenging, he added. That’s why Bogner and the powers-that-be at Hamm were so impressed with the line of crushers, screens and feeders made by Universal Engineering Corp. of Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

It was August of 2006 when the company first sat down with Universal and began detailing the precise specifications it needed to increase production within the quarry division.

Universal Engineering Corp. also partnered
with Simplicity to create a dual-screening plant
with two 7 X 20 LP (low profile) screens. This
screening plant can be used separately or in
conjunction with the crushers.

Product flowing through a
well-designed system.

“We were looking for a primary impact crusher and a secondary crusher, as well as a 7 x 20 screen,” noted Bogner. “We needed everything to be portable so we could move it around within the same quarry or from one site to another, depending on where we needed to process material at the time.”

Universal responded with blueprints for custom-designed plants that were not only sturdy and mobile, they were also capable of being adjusted on the fly. This feature, said Bogner, would enable Hamm’s equipment operators to quickly and easily adjust the flow rate and adjust feed angle and discharge setting with the press of a button.

Most other models on the market at the time did not have this capability. Consequently, users were forced to shut down their plants and manually tweak the internal components — a process that could take as much as two hours.

“With other equipment, there is too much down time to warrant making the adjustment, so we normally don’t bother. As a result, we end up running the machines at maximum capacity all of the time,” he said. “When we do take the time to adjust them manually, there is always the chance that it won’t make much of a difference anyway and we could realize that we wasted all that time for nothing.”

Lou Winchip, designer of the MaxCap Impactor
and chief engineer for Universal Engineering.

Another view of Universal Engineering’s
Portable 7x20TD Dual Screening Plant.

The Universal crushers that were selected for Hamm’s new plants were the MaxCap 600, a 600 tph primary impactor, and the 150/150 NGS (next generation secondary) impactor. Universal also partnered with Simplicity to create a dual-screening plant with two 7 X 20 LP (low profile) screens. This screening plant can be used separately or in conjunction with the crushers. 

Implementing such efficient processing pieces into the quarry division has enabled Hamm to maintain a high level of production for nearly six decades. The company’s knack for spotting prime business opportunities has also facilitated its success.