How to Break Large Cast Iron Pieces?

Cast is brittle, if you the Hammer you are Using is slow and time consuming,You need a Bigger Hammer, a Wrecking Ball, or Pile Driving Device

Look at marble and granite quarry methods.

Stone and cast iron are both brittle and wedges, swelling mixtures and explosives may work.

Chain drilling/oxy burning can premote fracture lines using existing holes and waisting to reduce effort.

Localised heating could generate forces too.

Combimed forces may be worthwhile.

why do I have a funny feeling I've been on this THREAD before?

man, I hope this thread doesn't make it to the CR4 record books again...

Most economical method used for breaking huge pieces of iron, is the use of brutal sledge hammer force manually. I have observed this most economic technique being employed to break huge iron blocks from ship breaking yards, for use as feed stock for castings.

Of course, this method is possible only in countries having plenty of semi -skilled illiterate men power desperate for a livelihood. This is the exact reason for the presence of huge ship breaking years in desperately poor countries where the survival takes precedence over extreme environmental pollution.

Beware that some elevator counterweights are depleted uranium, not Cast iron. Same with some aircraft ballast weights.

Heat them up red hot then drop em into a tank of water, they should shatter.

Earth is most definitely a mother.

I give a GA to the suggestion of a breaker for a bobcat. Of course that assumes the Original Author already has a $40,000 piece of equipment. If you don't have the bobcat (much less the breaker), it may be hard to justify the cost for the equipment.

Probably if you are handling 10000 lb pieces of cast iron you have some sort of heavy equipment. I am picturing a large payloader or similar forked vehicle of the heavy duty variety. You can pick up one counterweight and drop it full height onto another. When the pieces get too small to do much damage, drop another whole one on the pile to break up the pieces further. Of course your large equipment may likely be able to be modified to use the breaker (Hydraulic "Jack Hammer") mentioned above. You can also get them for back-hoes as well if that is what you are using for your yard operations. Not sure of the cost of the attachments, but if you are doing a volume of recycling, they would probably pay for themselves. That is the safest way to do it that I can think of.

If you have one available, I don't know why a rock crusher would not work, either. If you don't have one, check with a local quarry owner friend to see if they think one would work before you invest in one - even used. Hammermills are quite effective for breaking brittle stuff up, but your job is too big for that, unless you need to break it up into real small pieces. You could use one of the methods above to make it small enough for the hammermill, then run them through. Of course you will have to build a heavier screen than the one it will come with, but it is not a difficult job to do.

Best of luck with that - it is the right thing to do. I hope one of these suggestions helps you out of a bind.

Use Air-Arc gouging technique to cut cast iron blocks into pieces. By this method the block would be cut into desired pieces irrespective of the thickness. Person must be trained who is using Air-Arc gouging. If the thickness is 2" or less it can be cut by Oxy-Acetylene cutting torch.

There are rotary saws, either abrasive or even toothed now, that will cut a nice slot into the iron. Then I would bang in a tool steel wedge (chisel) and wait. If you get bored, saw another slot elsewhere that looks like it would join with the one you have and bang in another wedge. Sooner or later the iron will give up. You have used minimal tooling and effort to apply some serious pressure on the iron. The stresses will get the best of it.

To break big CI Blocks I recommend that there are people who use Hammer and Chisel to break it. Once I got a 17 Mts Anvil Block into small pieces of 100-110 Kgs pieces using Hammer and Chisel. But for this your need trained manpower.