With change a constant, few things truly stand the test of time.
The Symons cone crusher is one of those outliers. impact crusher plate
Invented more than a century ago by Edgar B. Symons, the Symons cone crusher revolutionized crushing as aggregate producers knew it in the 1920s. Design rights to the crusher, which was first marketed at Symons Brothers Co., were sold to Nordberg Manufacturing Co. just a few years after it emerged.
Regardless, the Symons cone crusher was a workhorse throughout the 21st century, introducing new efficiencies to crushing.
“The Symons is like your old Chevy or Ford pickup truck from the ‘70s,” says Jeremy Polcyn, who currently handles technical sales support for crusher spares at Metso. “It takes abuse, and you don’t have to change [the oil] every 3,000 miles – or ever.”
By 1931, Nordberg touted how the Symons cone crusher had been installed in 800 applications across a three-and-a-half-year period in 21 countries. As Nordberg described, the cone crusher delivered “unprecedented overall crushing cost economy” and “maximum reliability.”
Symons cones are still working hard in quarries and mines around the world, according to Polcyn.
“Honestly, the reason customers stick with the Symons is because it’s a bulletproof machine,” he says.
Born in 1871 in Sheridan, Indiana, Symons and two brothers managed their family company.
While Edgar was the inventor, Josiah E. Symons was characterized in the Indianapolis Star in 1928 as a “manufacturing executive” while William M. Symons was the “master salesman.” Their company, however, put forth industry advancements long before the Symons cone crusher was developed.
The Symons horizontal disc crusher reportedly emerged in 1911, leading to the development of the family company. A 1926 advertisement for the Symons disc crusher in Pit & Quarry details how it was built in 24-, 36- and 48-in. sizes, with capacities from 20 to 150 tph.
The vertical disc crusher was another Symons development, surfacing several years before the company’s vaunted cone that set the groundwork for the development of modern machines.
“For a long period of time, Symons was the No. 1 cone crusher out there,” says Polcyn, whose company is the only OEM supplier of Symons parts today. “Over 10,000 of them sold. The HP line has just crested over that. About two years ago, the HPs hit their 10,000th machine out there. But it took that long for somebody else out there to reach that mark.”
Mark Kennedy, a 35-year Metso employee who retired in 2023, has a similar understanding of Symons and his legacy cone crusher.
“It was the first original vertical cone crusher ever invented,” says Kennedy, who offers a history of the Symons cone crusher in a video Metso published online in 2020. “Prior to the Symons cone crusher, there was no vertical-style cone crusher with a head that gyrated back and forth. It was a pretty efficient machine for its time – maybe not to today’s standards, but for its day it was a pretty efficient cone crusher.”
According to Kennedy, the countershaft on the Symons cone crusher had a speed of about 485 rpm. The head gyrated back and forth to create a compression-style crushing action.
Additionally, Kennedy says the Symons cone crusher was available in two models. One was a standard model. The other was a shorthead.
“The crushers were different,” Kennedy says. “They weren’t the same. They weren’t interchangeable. If you had a standard cone crusher, it had to be used as a standard. If you had a shorthead, it had to be used as a shorthead in a tertiary application.”
Perhaps the most astounding part of Symons’ technology is that it remained unchanged for about a half-century.
“The Omnicone became a very versatile cone crusher because it was application friendly,” says Kennedy, referring to a development that emerged around 1980. “Unlike its predecessor, the Symons cone crusher, you could convert the Omnicone from secondary crusher to tertiary crusher by simply changing the wear parts that were fitted inside the machine. It made it a very versatile cone crusher for aggregate producers.”
Cone crushers underwent further advancements in the decades that followed, but the model Symons invented set the stage for the modern crushing industry. Polcyn says the original design still offers some advantages that modern cones do not.
“It comes down to reliability, “Polcyn says. “It’s user friendly. One thing we deal with in this industry is tramp metal. Shovel teeth are a No. 1 offender. Drill heads are an offender that get into the system. When you’re trying to crush rock and there’s tramp metal involved, it can severely damage equipment. Yet, the Symons can take that and pass it through relatively unscathed.”
Symons, who died in 1963, wrote in the patent application for his cone crusher how an objective of his machine was to prevent dust or dirt from accessing bearings. He also aimed to build a machine in which “a gyrated head is seated upon and supported on concave spherical bearing surfaces, the lower portion of the head being spherically convex in general conformity to the supporting surface.”
Symons ultimately secured a patent for the work that defines his industry legacy. But whether he understood the lasting impact of his invention – one that continues to perform at operations worldwide – is unknown.
“He really designed the machine,” Polcyn says. “Most guys in this industry have touched a Symons at one point in their life. It’s like the iPhone – everybody’s got one. In crushing, everybody has experienced a Symons. It’s the most prolific crusher out there.”
Related: P&Q Hall of Fame Profile: Gerald F. Bauer
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Kevin Yanik is editor-in-chief of Pit & Quarry. He can be reached at 216-706-3724 or kyanik@northcoastmedia.net.
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