Send an inquiry
Apron feeders

Maintain a steady material feed with an FLS apron feeder

FLS heavy-duty apron feeders are a vital interface between processes, delivering a consistent and controlled feed of materials. Their robust design ensures a smooth and clean process flow with reduced equipment wear, even when dealing with sticky, frozen, or highly abrasive materials of different sizes and densities.

Home/.../Feeding and conveying/Apron feeders

Key benefits of our apron feeders

  • Improve material flow

    FLS apron feeders provide an efficient and regulated material flow to downstream equipment, ensuring a controlled, stable process without the surges associated with direct truck dump operations. They can also reclaim stored materials, be it from hoppers and silos, or stockpiles. Material is transferred on an evenly moving deck, minimising the risk of blockages, even when handling sticky, wet, or frozen feeds. Volumetrically regulated feed metering is also possible to prevent flooding. The result? Improved process performance for a more sustainable, productive, and lower-maintenance operation.

  • Long-lasting operation with heavy-duty design

    A hydraulic-assisted take-up system maintains facilitates the correct tensioning of chains, eliminating sagging or over-tensioning. This ensures optimal tracking and loading off the rollers, and effectively protects the chains, bearings, and other components. Impact loads are absorbed by a natural material bed on top of the feeder, while heavy-duty impact beams in the feeding area ensure the feeder can handle the toughest conditions. Its heavy-duty design also features manganese steel pans, sealed-and-lubricated (SALT) chain components, and forged alloy steel main shafts.

  • Tailored to your application

    Our apron feeders can be installed wherever a reliable and steady feed or discharge of material is required, or where hard-to-handle materials may cause feeding challenges. Each feeder is custom designed, using standard parts, to fit the application and site conditions, including installation within existing plant footprints. In very challenging applications, a discrete model analysis (DEM) may also be performed to predict material flow and ascertain specific pressures and forces in the system. The drive units may be hydraulic or electromechanical, depending on your needs and preferences.

  • Ease the maintenance load

    We have designed our apron feeders for uninterrupted service, requiring stoppage only for the occasional replacement of wear parts. Worn aprons and chains are easily accessed from the take-up end for quick replacement. Sprocket wheels have bolted-on tooth segments that can be interchanged or replaced. Bearings, chains, and rollers are either lifetime lubricated or come with an automatic lubrication system. The result is a low-maintenance system that will reduce operating cost and extend productivity.

Our apron feeders

We delivered our first apron feeder more than 60 years ago and today make some of the largest apron feeders in the world with throughputs up to 15,000tph, designed to match the capacity of our largest gyratory crushers. These sturdy and reliable pieces of equipment can handle any hard and soft rock ores and are ideally suited to harsh conditions, conveying ore bodies from small to large particle sizes. This, combined with their ability to handle high impact loads, sets our apron feeders apart from most other feeders, making them ideal for the rough-and-tumble operating environments prevelant in the mining industry. Depending on the size of the feeder, it will be delivered to site in pre-assembled sections, or even as a single unit, for quick and easy installation and commissioning.  

 

Want to talk? Reach out to our experts

Contact us

Maintenance of our apron feeders

Our global community of experts will deliver a tailored solution, and is always on hand to provide expert inspection, assessment, and optimisation support, including operator training for safe and more production operations. We offer full after sales support for all equipment we supply, including installation, commissioning, maintenance contracts, and supervision. Spare parts are available 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, while our global presence allows timely response to maintenance and repairs requests.

Downloads for apron feeders

Frequently asked questions

FAQs for apron feeders

An apron feeder, also known as a pan feeder, is a type of mechanical feeder used in mining applications to transfer material to equipment, such as a primary crusher, or to extract material from stockpiles, bins, or hoppers at a controlled and consistent rate.

Apron feeders may be used at various point in the material handling process. Common uses include the primary crusher feed and discharge, reclamation of material from stockpiles, unloading of bulk materials from rail cars, and at the outlet of storage bins and silos.

Apron feeders offer several benefits including durability and reliability, consistency of feed rates, and versatility of feed materials, including wet, sticky, and abrasive materials.

We manufacturer some of the largest apron feeders available with capacities of up to 15,000tph, matching the largest of our primary crushers.