History of Rock Crushers

Rock crushers are a staple of modern industries such as mining and construction. These massive machines reduce materials like rock and cement by repeatedly breaking them against several metal plates. The power, output, and crushing capacity of a rock crusher can vary greatly depending on the model as well as the materials being crushed. While rock crushers are so prevalent today, how did they originally come about?

An early version of the rock crusher appears on a patent filed in America in 1830. It featured a somewhat crude take on the drop hammer that would later become an important device in the development of modern mining. A decade later, a more advanced version of the rock crusher was patented. This crusher featured a large wooden box around a wooden drum that was fitted with a number of hammers and iron knobs. The device was operated by spinning the drum at a rate of nearly 350 rotations per minute; the drum would then shatter rocks that were fed into the box. This machine was the first device to boast some of the concepts still seen in rock crushers today. However, as with many machines from this era, there is no evidence that these crushers ever advanced beyond the patent stage.

Famed inventor Eli Whitney Blake, nephew of Eli Whitney, made the most significant contribution to the early days of rock crushers. When Blake was appointed to oversee a public works project paving city streets in 1852, he was annoyed by the lack of machines that could efficiently break stone for such an operation. Blake set to work designing a machine capable of easily breaking stone for the project. In 1857, he unveiled the result to the world-the Blake Jaw Crusher.The Blake Jaw Crusher employed a deceptively simple toggle linkage construction to break up stone. The new invention was so effective that today, the Blake Jaw Crusher remains the preferred machine for industrial rock crushing. It has yet to be surpassed in design, and is still the standard by which other rock crushers are judged.