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Case Studies
Mining & Mineral Processing
Cutting Trona-Milling Wear Failures From Every 5M Lbs to Once in 16M+
SCProbond™ N cutter blocks replaced a rotating cycle of steel, tungsten carbide, and cast iron parts — and are still in service after milling more than 16 million pounds of Trona.
Industry
Mining & Mineral Processing
Grade Used
SCProbond™ N
Component
Refining Cutter Blocks
Outcome
16M+ lbs Milled, Still in Service
Executive Summary
The Bottom Line
A Trona refiner cycled through gas-nitrided steel, tungsten carbide-coated, and white cast iron cutter blocks — none held up to the abrasive milling process for long. Switching to SCProbond™ N nitride-bonded silicon carbide cut the failure rate dramatically: blocks that once needed replacing every 5 million pounds milled are still in service beyond 16 million pounds.
Fast Facts
Prior Material
Prior Service Life
SCProbond™ N Wear
In Service Since
The challenge
An Unusually Abrasive Milling Process
Trona is harder and more abrasive than the mineral ashes and salts typically processed in refining mills. In this operation, rotor blades accelerate sorbent particles against toothed cutter blocks to break them apart — an extremely abrasive environment by design. The customer had already tried forged AISI 4140 gas-nitrided steel, tungsten carbide cobalt coatings, and white cast iron cutter blocks. Each provided some wear protection, but none met the run-time the operation needed: gas-nitrided steel blocks lasted an average of only 5 million pounds milled before replacement.
01
Diagnose the Bond Failure
SCP identified that hardness alone wasn't the limiting factor — the bond holding each material's wear grains in place was failing under sustained abrasive impact.
02
Specify SCProbond™ N
Custom cutter blocks were manufactured from SCProbond™ N — combining extremely hard SiC grains with the strong silicon nitride bond formed during firing.
03
Test Against a Tougher Sorbent
With initial success proven, SCP and the customer tested SCProbond™ N against a newly developed, finer, more abrasive sorbent blend.
The results
Measured Impact in the Field
40%
Wear After 10.9M lbs Milled
A fraction of the wear the prior gas-nitrided steel blocks showed after far less volume.
2x
Replacement Cycles Avoided
Gas-nitrided steel blocks were replaced twice in the time it took SCProbond™ N to reach 40% wear.
16M+ lbs
Milled Since 2018, Still in Service
The original SCProbond™ N blocks installed in 2018 remain in production today.
We installed 20 NBSC cutter blocks in each of two mills in series. After completing 5 days of testing, the NBSC cutter blocks milled over 495,000 lb of the silica-based sorbent and are worn less than 10%, as opposed to the standard cutter blocks which were completely worn out after about 50,000 lb.
Senior Product Development Engineer
Returning SCP Customer
Explore the application
Grade Used