What is the difference between a coarse crusher and a fine crusher?

Saturday August-02 2025  16:37:12

In the sand and gravel aggregate production industry, choosing the wrong crushing equipment can lead to endless headaches: frequent component replacements, high energy consumption, substandard products, and squeezed profit margins. Faced with a wide variety of crushing equipment, many customers are often confused: should they use a coarse crusher or a fine crusher for their material?

The crushing process is typically divided into three stages: coarse crushing, secondary crushing, and fine crushing (or shaping). So, what is the difference between a coarse crusher and a fine crusher in the crushing process?

Coarse crushers: Used for initial crushing, they reduce large, mined raw materials (≤1500mm) to smaller pieces of 100-300mm. They handle the first stage of crushing large, bulky raw materials.

Fine crushers: Used for the precision shaping stage, they further crush the medium-crushed material (usually ≤100mm) to 0-10mm or even finer (0-5mm), achieving a final product with excellent particle shape and meeting required specifications. This is a critical step in the process of reaching the final product.

What are the coarse crushers?

The main coarse crusher equipment includes jaw crushers and gyratory crushers.

The jaw coarse crusher is an all-rounder in the primary crushing field, accounting for over 80% of primary crushing applications. It features a simple and reliable structure, a large feed opening (up to 1m x 1.3m), and can directly handle boulders up to 1500mm in size. Its price is only 60-70% of similar equipment.

Disadvantages: The output particle shape is poor (needle-like content >15%), the liner wears quickly, and subsequent secondary and tertiary crushing equipment is required.

Gyratory coarse crusher: Optimized for high production volumes, it offers high continuous crushing capacity, with an output of over 2000 tons per hour. It does not require a feeder and can be fed directly with large materials.

Disadvantages: The jaw crusher is 5-8 meters tall, the infrastructure cost doubles, and the price is 2-3 times that of a jaw crusher.

At what stage of material processing should a primary crusher be selected?

Choose a coarse crusher if your material meets any of the following characteristics:

Raw material size > 500mm (e.g., raw ore after blasting, large blocks of building concrete)

Target particle size between 100-350mm

Subsequent secondary and fine crushing steps are required

Capacity requirement > 500 tons/hour (gyratory crusher preferred) or < 500 tons/hour (jaw crusher preferred)

What types of fine crushers are there?

Common types of fine crushers include cone, impact, and vertical shaft impact crushers. Details are as follows:

Cone crusher (short head): This is a wear-resistant tool for finely crushing hard rock. It offers exceptional wear resistance and is suitable for hard materials such as granite and basalt. The finished product has a uniform particle shape (less than 10% needle-like flakes) and can reach 700 tons per hour.

Disadvantages: Complex structure, single-cylinder hydraulic cone crushers cost over one million yuan; prone to plugging with sticky materials with moisture content > 5%. Impact Crusher: Designed for fine crushing of medium-hard materials, with a cubic content of >85% in the finished product. For example, the 1414 model can produce fine sand 0-10mm in diameter, with an output of 50-150 tons per hour. The equipment investment is only 60% of that of a cone crusher.

Disadvantages: Rapid hammer wear; when crushing basalt, the lifespan is only one-third of that of a cone crusher; feed material requirement ≤150mm.

Vertical Shaft Impact Crusher (VSI Sand Making Machine): Utilizing a "rock-on-rock" or "rock-on-iron" principle, the finished product is highly rounded and has a high bulk density, making it an excellent choice for high-quality concrete aggregate.

Disadvantages: Feed size ≤50mm; high maintenance costs in the event of equipment failure.

When should you choose a Fine Crusher?

When your process requires:

Discharge size <30mm (especially 0-5mm machine-made sand);

Quality in finished product shape (cubic content >80%);

The raw material is already coarsely crushed to a medium particle size of 100-150mm;

Processing material with a moisture content <8% (to avoid cavitation).

Reference table for crushing of common materials