The Different Types of Demolition Equipment
High-profile demolitions often make the local news. When a beloved old sports venue goes down for the count, we often get to see the footage of the controlled implosion bringing down the house one final time. When quarters are too tight for even a well-controlled implosion, an old building makes a date with the wrecking ball, which can also be quite a spectacle.
But the true demolition cognoscenti among us know that there is more to it than just brute force. Taking down a building is a comprehensive process that involves many steps before anyone can push the red button and send the rest of a stripped structure to the ground. That’s not to mention the fate of that pile of rubble—it can’t just sit there. In this guide, we’ll explore the different types of demolition equipment that demolition specialists use, many of which you can find right here through Moley Magnetics.
Excavator Shears
You can’t immediately feed all big metal pieces to the ground-bound alligator shears. Not all scrap is suited for manual loading. This means applying a very useful extension to your excavator. When you need to meet the metal where it is, your excavator shears will pick up scrap metal and take a bite. Excavator scrap shears greatly expedite your demolition process by both lifting and cutting scrap such as piping, cables, and girders. Excavator shears from Moley Magnetics feature four-turn reversible blades to ensure long-lasting cutting power, dual guide blades to cut down—no pun intended—on pesky intake jams, and added pressure from an offset jaw apex. It is an accessory no excavator or demolition site can do without.
Excavator Magnets
Just as shears attach to your excavator, you can attach an electromagnet to the excavator to do some seriously heavy lifting. Not only can your excavator scrap magnet pick up heavy pieces of scrap, but they can also even locate and remove small pieces that you would not expect them to catch, like loose nails, screws, cuttings, or other metallic remains. By capturing metal big and small, demolition experts can be sure to remove all possible metal from the site, leaving behind no dangerous scrap and harvesting as much material for recycling as possible.
Hydraulic Magnets
As effective as traditional excavator magnets are, they do have to overcome some limiting factors—namely, that they require an electrical connection that is not always available. Hydraulic magnets supplement excavator-based electromagnets as a “one-stop-shop” by using hydraulic power and a generator instead. If you are in a tight spot and far from the juice, a hydraulic magnet is indispensable for your demolition needs. One key advantage of a fully-enclosed hydraulic magnet is how easy they are to switch in and out. With only a few hookups to make, a hydraulic bench is always ready to come off the bench and jump into demolition action.
Concrete Pulverizers
Concrete is one of our strongest and most versatile building materials; it sure doesn’t go down without a fight. Concrete slabs are heavy, unwieldy, and take up a great deal of space once they have been displaced, and that’s precisely where your concrete pulverizer comes in. The word “pulverizer” is a slight misnomer—it won’t exactly reduce your concrete to a fine powder; however, what it will do is reduce it to rubble, making transportation away from the premises markedly easier. Pulverizers from Moley Magnetics distinguish themselves from the competition through their superior design that keeps these hard workers working hard longer.
Moley pulverizers come equipped with blades for slicing steel reinforcement bars, or rebar, while they crush, and use innovative cylinder placement to prevent that rebar from doing damage to the unit. Once you’ve crushed your concrete, you use magnets to draw out the rebar, which can be melted down and recycled into new steel. While the rest of your concrete isn’t made of metal, enterprising businesses can find ways to recycle that, too. Pulverized concrete winds up beneath newly constructed roads, where it acts as a solid base. It can even wind up as the aggregate in new concrete.
Wire Granulators
As you demolish a building and tear out any remaining wires, it’s advantageous to strip their insulation and prepare them for baling as soon as possible. Wire granulators use powerful electromagnetic currents to separate even metals that aren’t naturally magnetic from their inert plastic coatings. This allows recyclers to recoup copper, one of the most valuable metals in the recycling business, without having to go through the tedious process of manually stripping yards upon yards of wire. Wire granulators also work well on metal coils, which can be granulated and better prepared for baling.
Demolition Grapples
To laypeople, it’s known as the “iron claw.” To those of us in the industry, it’s known as the demolition grapple, an implement no work site could tear down without. Demolition grapples typically come in two “flavors”: mechanical and hydraulic. Mechanical grapples grab with the most power, while hydraulic grapples offer a full 360 degrees of mobility and work with higher precision. Grapples have varying sets of tines with which they latch onto their “prey.” Perhaps counterintuitively, the fewer tines a grapple has, the more power it grips with. A “five-over-six” tine configuration finds its use not in picking up the big stuff, but in capturing smaller chunks that would drop out of a grapple with larger tines.
Demolition grapples come in different sizes as well as tine configurations, and bigger is not necessarily better—you will sacrifice some power as you scale up. With the hard work that grapples do, it’s truly imperative that they’re up to the task. Moley grapples are built with wear-proof steel to last longer than their competitors and go an extra step toward maximum durability by using chromium-plated rods.
Demolish With Moley Magnetics
These are just a few of the different types of demolition equipment that you’ll need as you get to work. Without these on your work site, you’ll have a tough time taking a building down. Whether you’re harnessing electromagnetism or crushing concrete, you can find them right here at Moley Magnetics. Contact us today.