Editor’s note: Jeremy Polcyn, who currently handles technical sales support for crusher spares at Metso, accepted the Pit & Quarry Hall of Fame honor this year on behalf of Edgar B. Symons, who died in 1963. Below are excerpts from the speech Polcyn delivered in honor of Symons. The speech can be viewed in full here.
ON THE IMPACT OF THE SYMONS CRUSHER ON THE AGGREGATE INDUSTRY: Thank you to Pit & Quarry for recognizing [Edgar B. Symons] and his contributions to the aggregate and mining worlds. I can’t think of a more classic crusher than the Symons. When I started with Metso back in 2013, the crushing division was on a ‘Replace a Symons 7-ft. [crusher]’ campaign. This was our entire focus in the capital division of the crushing business line. We had success replacing these with our HP and MP cone crushers, but, more often than not, when we would approach an aggregate or mining customer suggesting that they should replace their Symons 7-ft., we were often met with: ‘Why in the world would I replace that machine?’ It is a bulletproof design.
ON MAINTAINING A SYMONS CRUSHER: There are many stories of operators maintaining the Symons. One that sticks out for me is a testament to its design. There was a customer of ours performing regular maintenance on a Symons, replacing the mantle and bowl liners. When they were doing this, they removed the main shaft, and the inner eccentric bushing fell into the machine. They didn’t know what to do. They were in a panic. They didn’t plan for this. They were able to jigsaw a piece of this bushing back together and get the machine back up and running for enough time to get that new bushing into place. You just don’t find a machine like that, especially with some of the higher technology machines out there today. That’s really a testament to what Edgar B. Symons designed.
ON THE POPULARITY OF THE SYMONS CRUSHER: The Nordberg Manufacturing Co. decided to acquire these crushers because they understood how robust and how durable this equipment was. Before and after Nordberg acquired the Symons crusher, there have been over 10,000 of these machines sold across the world. There are 10-ft. machines out there as well as the 7-ft. Only recently has Metso surpassed that quantity of install bays with our HP crushers, but that took quite a lot of time. Over 10,000 Symons 7-ft. crushers are out there, and I’m happy to say we are continuing that legacy and putting new Symons machines out in the field today.
ON SYMONS DEVELOPING HIS CONE CRUSHER: Symons really designed and engineered on good intuition – with paper and pencil – the standard in the industry for almost 100 years. Edgar really hit the nail on the head with this design and, perhaps, his only mistake was selling it off to Nordberg so fast. I’m quite sure most of you in this room have either heard of, worked on or owned one or multiple Symons crushers. In not just the U.S., Canada and Mexico, but globally they have quite the presence. There is one site in the U.S. that is currently operating 40 of these machines at a single time. It is really a testament to that design and how robust it is – even by today’s standards.
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