Hammerhead Crusher Bucket wins prestigious design award
An innovative crusher bucket developed by Flip Screen Australia has taken home a Good Design Award in the Engineering Design categoryIn the mining and construction industries, waste recycling is becoming increasingly important but conventional methods to crush and process materials such as rock and concrete for recycling are cumbersome and slow.
A team at Flip Screen Australia, consisting of Sam Turnbull and Sujesh Thottumkara, came up with an innovative solution that is mobile, quick and allows for a wide range of crush sizes to suit different operator requirements.
The Hammerhead Crusher Bucket is an excavator attachment, meaning it can be easily transported anywhere for use.
The bucket consists of multiple eccentric rollers with independent outer sleeves to crush large rock and concrete containing reinforcing steel. Hydraulic cylinders are easily and quickly adjustable to change crush sizing.
The Hammerhead utilises the full power of the excavator and an automatic, variable displacement motor providing up to 720kw of power to perform a patented crushing action that the inventors claim outperforms current European crusher buckets.
To make the bucket as lightweight as possible, inventors have built it using steel only where necessary and lightweight T6 alloys, increasing its versatility to be used by a wider range and sizes of excavators. Ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene (UHWPE) is used in the transmission and throughout the whole machine to replace heavier steel, including the barrier between vulnerable hydraulics and the crushing rollers.
The bottom jaw of the bucket is easily detachable without the use of tools to allow for maintenance or replacing wear parts.
CEO of Good Design Australia and Chair of the Awards, Dr Brandon Gien, said the panel was impressed by the Hammerhead Crusher Bucket’s thoughtful design and impressive engineering.
“The on-site crushing of materials, such as building demolition waste, to sizes promised by the Hammerhead Crusher Bucket is a solution to a problem that is not only well understood by the general public but one of the construction industry's greatest environmental challenges,” he said.
“The team has done a terrific job of telling this story. A wider variety of output sizes and crucially smaller sizes should see the Hammerhead Crusher Bucket find many customers.”
The other winner of the Engineering Design award was an EXPLOR Biogravity platform, developed by EXPLOR Space Technologies, that simulates microgravity (10-3g) of space on earth.
The platform will be used to allow researchers to study the human physiological, diseases and plant response to microgravity so that we can develop technologies to advance human space flight while improving health on Earth.
The Australian Good Design Awards was held in person for the first time since the pandemic at the Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre on Friday, September 16.
The ultimate prize – the Australian Good Design Award of the Year for 2022 – went to Australian medtech company, AdvanCell Isotopes, for its AdvanCell Isotopes 212Pb Generator, which is effectively a world-first cancer fighting device providing targeted alpha therapy.
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