Portable rock crushers benefit various applications, enabling you to crush materials easily and conveniently directly on-site. Industries from construction and mining to recycling and landscaping can find many uses for these versatile machines. Selecting a rock crusher with the right engine configuration for your needs can help you make the most of your crusher investment and be crucial in the long-term success of your operation.

A diesel over electric engine configuration provides powerful, cost-effective performance that makes a portable rock crusher much more efficient and dependable. This power plant design can help you maximize crushing productivity while minimizing fuel, maintenance and other operational costs.

What Is a Diesel Over Electric Configuration?

In short, it is the cutting edge technology on the rock crushing business. Every major manufacturer is making the transition to these technologies due to the tremendous advantages they offer over the old school direct drive, hydraulic, and track systems.

A portable rock crusher with a diesel-electric engine configuration features three key components:

  • A diesel engine: The diesel engine provides primary power for the crusher by converting diesel fuel into mechanical energy through combustion.
  • A generator: As the diesel engine runs, it turns the generator, which converts the mechanical energy into electrical energy via an alternator.
  • Electric motors: The generator feeds the electrical energy into the crusher’s various motors, such as jaw drive motors, discharge conveyor motors and vibratory feeder motors.

Rock crushing equipment requires significant power to start and operate under heavy and variable loads. Direct drive engine machines have been a popular choice in previous years because they can provide the necessary torque for operation, but these systems come with significantly higher operational and maintenance costs. Diesel-electric crushers can offer more torque and precision while bypassing the high costs typically associated with direct drive engine and hydraulic systems.

What Are the Benefits of a Diesel Over-Electric Crusher Design?

When used within a portable rock crusher, diesel-electric technology can bring huge economic and operational advantages.

Economic Benefits

There is a tremendous amount of impact and vibration all day every day in the crushing environment. Technologies utilized to minimize the impact of this harsh environment are crucial to the efficiency, durability, and reliability of any crusher.

Traditional crusher systems with direct-drive engine configurations, hydraulics and tracks have always had the true reputation of high operation and maintenance costs, as well as down time. These systems have intricate component and fluid systems that need continual upkeep to ensure optimal performance in the harsh and extreme environment of crushing.  These systems need significantly more maintenance or more frequent replacements when operating within the rough crushing environment, translating to much higher costs.

The diesel over electric configuration using cutting edge technologies can mitigate these costs tremendously if applied in the correct way. The initial investment for a diesel-electric portable rock crusher can, but not always be higher than for crushers with other engine designs, yet you can definitely count on higher returns. Costs are lower for:

  • Maintenance: These systems have fewer grease points, filters, and hydraulics that require maintenance. They also use fewer fluids, reducing costs and replacement efforts. Hydraulics can be a challenge on any equipment, and especially so in the crushing environment. The same is true for direct drive engines.
  • Daily operation: Diesel-electric engine configurations operate efficiently in dusty and rugged crushing environments. When paired with effective air filters, they can operate continuously with little to no downtime if properly cared for, resulting in tremendously lower operation costs and much greater revenue.
  • Fuel: The diesel over electric setup optimizes fuel efficiency power output to load. Their flexibility and reliability enable them to optimize operational performance while reducing fuel costs. A well designed made in USA diesel engine generator burns a fraction of the fuel that direct drive engines consume.

Operational Efficiencies

Diesel engines operate most efficiently when they run at constant speeds, but the crushing environment is filled with load variances. A hybrid configuration combines a diesel engine’s significant power output with an electric motor’s seamless operation. An electric motor enables you to respond quickly to load changes with smooth acceleration and deceleration while allowing the diesel engine to run at optimal efficiency.

A diesel-electric configuration provides greater flexibility and control over speed and torque, facilitating greater productivity on the jobsite. Crushers with diesel over electric technology can greatly reduce mechanical stress on components and lead to more durable, long-lasting performance. Because diesel-electric machines operate reliably and efficiently, they give you tremendously more uptime on the jobsite.

How Does a Diesel Over Electric Drive Compare to Other Drive Configurations?

Diesel over electric drives have many operational, maintenance and cost advantages over other drive configurations such as hydraulic, electric-only and diesel-only systems.

Hydraulic

Hydraulic systems have higher maintenance and operational requirements to ensure optimal performance in rugged and dusty crushing environments. Their rigorous cleaning and upkeep requirements can increase costs. Diesel over electric configurations replace hydraulic pumps with more efficient and reliable electric motors. These motors have fewer maintenance requirements, reducing costs and downtime.

Electric-Only

Electric-only systems depend on an external reliable power source, such as batteries. With long charging periods and other power-related limitations, electric-only systems may experience reduced operational flexibility and portability. Diesel-electric systems use diesel engines to generate reliable power wherever your operations take place. You can experience longer operational hours with fewer interruptions for refueling.

Diesel-Only

While diesel engines provide significant power, they operate less efficiently under variable loads, which are common in the crushing environment. Due to their high emissions, diesel engines must also comply with many environmental regulations. Diesel-electric configurations take advantage of a diesel engine’s power while reducing fuel consumption, emissions and noise levels with an electric motor.

Applications for a Portable Rock Crusher With a Diesel Over Electric Configuration

The diesel over electric engine system is common in large locomotives and ships, but it also has many uses and benefits within smaller machines. Having a hybrid engine configuration within a portable rock crusher can be an asset for a range of industries, including:

  • Construction: Diesel-electric systems enable site mobility since the diesel engine can provide power at any location. If your jobsite has fluctuating material types and volumes, you can depend on the rock crusher’s hybrid engine to adjust power output and torque as needed.
  • Mining: Rock crushers with diesel-electric engines are well-suited to operate in harsh mining environments. The diesel engine provides reliable power, while the electric motors deliver flexibility and efficiency.
  • Quarrying: Diesel-electric engine configurations are ideal for continuous quarrying operations that need steady performance with minimal downtime. Crushers within a diesel-electric system may be powerful enough to run additional components, such as screen plants and conveyors.
  • Landscaping: If you operate in a residential area, choosing a diesel-electric engine lowers noise pollution. These systems also allow you to work quickly and efficiently on-site, keeping projects moving forward on time and within budget.
  • Emergency response: Diesel-electric portable rock crushers do not need access to the grid, making them ideal for emergency response situations. They can be deployed quickly and operate anywhere with powerful, efficient performance.

Experience the Benefits of Diesel Over Electric With a Senya MICRO Crusher

Senya Crushers has spent years fine-tuning unique and exclusive crushing equipment technologies that meets modern construction site needs. We are proud to help small to midsize contractors use our innovative technologies, such as diesel over electric engine systems. 

Our MICRO Crusher lineup is considerably overbuilt in crushing power. The hardness of material being crushed to be a non-issue in our MICRO Crusher lineup. The crushing power can have a major impact on the cost of crushing equipment, and our competitors don’t come close to our crushing power on comparable sized machines. In fact, many admit their crushers are only designed for concrete, asphalt and block. 

Our crushers can handle the hardest material you can throw at them without slowing down. We do demonstrations of our MICRO Plant using the hardest material we can find-granite rip rap. This has a Mohs hardness level of 8-9, well over twice the hardness on concrete, block, and asphalt at around 3 Mohs hardness.

Check out our Senya 5 portable jaw rock crusher crushing granite rip rap at 77 tph in this video. It’s an amazing piece of machinery that can produce so much tonnage on a crusher that you can pull with a pickup!

 Here’s the video:

This massive crushing power translates to tremendous long term durability and reliability, not to mention productivity. 

When you harness such massive crushing power on our small USA made, titled, and VIN’d trailer, the diesel over electric configuration is an absolute must due to the power, durability, reliability, and efficiency of that power configuration. Old school direct drive systems, hydraulics, and tracked machinery simply can’t handle that harsh and extreme environment of crushing on such a compact platform. Senya Crushers has honed the technologies for mitigation of those effects like the constant vibration and impact, not to mention dust production, to perfection.

The Senya 5 portable jaw rock crusher also features a reliable USA-made, serviced, and warrantied Yanmar engine diesel generator in our diesel over electric configuration. The self-contained generator also has a double-triple air filtration system to ensure equipment longevity in rugged crushing environments. As with our crushing power, the generator is powerful enough to run the entire MICRO Plant of the crusher, screen plant, and up to three stacker conveyors and still has enough power left over for an optional Step-Down Transformer upgrade providing 20 amps of 220 volt or 30 amps of 110 volt on site electric service. Yet the generator is just below the KW output that requires DEF fluid, so there are those cost savings as well.

Contact us today to learn more about our products with a diesel-electric engine configuration and how they can boost your efficiency and profitability.

THERE SIMPLY IS NOTHING IN THE WORLD EVEN CLOSE TO THIS REVOLUTIONARY MACHINERY!