Former Irish international rugby player Tom operates at Ballycore Quarry supplying all sands and pebble for building and drainage schemes together with speciality pebble for land fill sites. Looking for a cost effective way of washing his dry screened pebble, Tom, after extensive research found the ideal machine for this task in the ORTNER.

Manufactured by Finedoor in the UK under license from AEI, USA, this versatile machine also comes with the added bonus that when required it can be configured to wash dry screened sand in a separate process.

Finedoor, based in Morley, Leeds are a well recognised manufacturer of high quality screens for both aggregate and asphalt applications and have supplied all major quarry groups in Ireland, UK and the Middle East. With currently over 400 ORTNER machines currently operating in North and South America, Finedoor have recently introduced this mature technology into the EU.

The ORTNER is extremely versatile as it can be used to rinse stone, bringing the material in to specification, wash sand by removing silt and de-water slurry to enable it to be sold immediately. The same unit can also be used for all three tasks by making small modifications to its configuration, i.e.: changing the angle of the pan, varying the speed and, or vibration and water input.

The ORTNER has a small power requirement, with the largest ORTNER requiring 18kW to wash sand at approximately 180tph, and the 3000 unit 9kW to wash sand at approximately 80tph.

The ORTNER has a much reduced water requirement which would be 5 times less than traditional rinsing of stone using wet screening. The water requirement for washing sand utilising a sand screw would be 3 to 4 times less than traditional methods.

Both the reduced power and low water requirement issues are seen as being extremely important from an environmental and cost point of view in today's challenging market place.

Operation of the ORTNER is simple with material fed to a slowly revolving pan on an incline and vibrated at high speed. Water is fed into the feed box through a 2 inch pipe. The high speed vibration quickly separates the various sizes of material with the silt and water rising to the top and flowing over the weir to the discharge.

The coarser particles and clean fines sink to the bottom with the rotating pan carrying the settled particles up the machine and out of the water, where a stationary plough diverts the de-watered material to a centre discharge chute. The driving and vibrating mechanisms are mounted under the pan thereby preventing any contamination with the water and processed material and also increasing the life of the components.

This gives the ORTNER a wide range of flexibility and increases its capacity and efficiency.

There are few wear parts in the ORTNER which are easily replaced thereby providing a low maintenance requirement. This coupled with the low power and water usage provides a most cost effective washing plant for the aggregate industry.

The machine is easily erected requiring a small stable area with appropriate material feeding and take away together with a regular low level water supply.