40-year-old Hillhead still attracts Bunting

Hillhead 2022 provides perfect platform to showcase latest metal detection and separation technology

The first Hillhead was held in 1982 and in the 40 years since then Bunting have manufactured and supplied thousands of magnetic separators and metal detectors for use in the aggregate and recycling industries. Once again, Bunting will be exhibiting at the 2022 show, helping companies to solve their metal detection and separation problems.

Bunting are one of the world’s leading designers and manufacturers of metal detectors, magnetic separators, eddy current separators, and electrostatic separators. The company’s European manufacturing facilities are in Redditch and Berkhamsted, both in the UK.

Bunting began exhibiting at Hillhead under the name Master Magnets in the 1980s. Both magnetic separators and industrial metal detectors have evolved since 1982, becoming stronger, lighter, and more efficient, and Hillhead 2022 provides the perfect platform to showcase the latest metal separation technology, including the ElectroMax and ElectroMax-Plus overband magnets.

The development of the ElectroMax overband magnet followed user requests for stronger and lighter overband magnets for mobile plant. As one of the world’s largest producers of permanent overband magnets for mobile crushers and screens, companies turned to Bunting to design a light and powerful electromagnetic version.

When compared with permanent overband magnets, the air-cooled ElectroMax unit has an average increase in magnetic power of 185%, matched by a weight reduction of 25%. The ElectroMax-Plus further increases the magnetic power of the ElectroMax by at least another 105%. Since the magnetic separator’s launch, the ElectroMax has proven popular with mobile equipment manufacturers and users, as well as static plant suppliers and operators.

In a quarry or mine, tramp metal can cause costly and time-consuming damage to screens, crushers, and conveyor belts. At Hillhead, the Bunting team will explain how to prevent such issues by installing suitable metal detectors and magnetic separators.

Bunting’s range of industrial metal detectors, including the TN77, QDC, and QTA models, detect and enable the removal of tramp iron and manganese steel (eg non-magnetic digger teeth). The metal detectors are commonly installed with an overband magnet or pulley magnet to provide the ultimate tramp metal protection.

Overband magnets are also used to recover ferrous metals from recycled materials (eg steel beverage cans). However, since the first Hillhead in 1982, the emergence of the eddy current separator for recovering non-ferrous metals proved to be a defining moment for the recycling industry. The technology is now widely used in recycling plants processing household, construction, wood, and plastic waste etc.

The Bunting range of eddy current separators continues to evolve, allowing the separation of both large and small non-ferrous metals. Many are mounted on mobile plant for batch processing waste stockpiles in situ.

‘Hillhead has always been an important exhibition for us,’ explained Adrian Coleman, general manager of Bunting-Redditch. ‘With many of the exhibitors also being customers, the show provides the perfect platform to meet and discuss projects.’