Extending wear plate life cycles: How are composite materials redefining the entire approach to wear plate maintenance?
In mining and bulk material handling, wear is not just a maintenance issue — it is a real production risk. Transfer points, crusher discharge zones, and chute linings face continuous abrasive sliding combined with repeated heavy impacts. If a conveyor fails due to wear, the consequences are immediate and severe: unplanned downtime, significant safety risks, and lost revenue that can reach hundreds of thousands of dollars per hour.
Traditional hardened steel solutions have long been the industry standard for wear plates. However, in the most demanding applications, steel alone reaches its performance limits. As the risk of such wear plates failing is significant, many operations are forced to change plates frequently leading to production downtimes and safety risks associated with maintenance.
To understand durability, we must look beyond surface-level hardness and examine the engineering of wear resistance and impact resistance.
The science of durability: wear resistance vs. impact resistance
In bulk material handling, wear plates must survive two wear mechanisms simultaneosly:
- Abrasive wear: This occurs when material slides across the surface. To combat this, a material needs extreme hardness.
- Impact damage: This occurs when large rocks or heavy materials are dropped from height, such as in a primary crusher or a high-velocity transfer chute. If a material is too hard without being ”tough,” it becomes brittle and cracks upon impact.
Achieving both extreme hardness and high impact resistance in a single, homogenous material is metallurgically difficult; as you increase hardness, you typically decrease toughness. When using a single material, there is always a trade off.
When hardened steel reaches its limit
As said, most operations still rely on hardened steels. While effective in moderate conditions, hardened steel presents limitations in high-impact abrasive environments.
In many applications, steel liners require frequent replacement. This increase maintenance intervals and risks related to maintenance, as often the wear plates are deep within a mine. Ultimately, the wear plates can cause production losses to accumulate.
In large-scale mining, one hour of unplanned downtime can cost hundreds of thousandsof euros in lost production. When wear plate relining becomes frequent, the total cost extends far beyond the price of the wear plate itself.
New levels of durability: composite materials
Many maintenance schedules in mining and other operations are built around the durability of hardened steel wear plates. But it doesn’t have to be so. Composite materials free us from the wear resistance vs impact resistance conundrum.
ROXON’s ROXDUR wear plates are based on a composite structure:
- Cemented carbide for extreme hardness and abrasion resistance
- Iron matrix for toughness and impact resistance.
Cemented carbide (typically tungsten carbide with a cobalt binder) is widely used in cutting tools as well as in automotive and aerospace industries where abbrasion resistance is required. The material is so hard that, that the Brinell scale cannot measure it’s hardness.
However, solid carbide alone would be too brittle for heavy impact environments. ROXDUR’s innovation lies in combining cemented carbide with an iron matrix in a single cast component.
The financial logic: ROI over upfront cost
Why has hardened steel remained popular in wear plates despite its brittle nature? Because it is relatively cheap. High-performance alternatives have expensive upfront costs. A ROXDUR wear plate can cost up to five times more than a standard steel plate.
However, focusing solely on the purchase price is a common pitfall that overlooks the firefighting costs of frequent maintenance. In large mines, eliminating just one shutdown can offset the investment multiple times over.
If a standard steel plate requires replacement every three months, the annual cost includes not just the four sets of plates, but four separate instances of planned (or unplanned) downtime and labor costs.
Because ROXDUR can achieve a 10–15x longer life, a chute that previously required quarterly maintenance can often run for a year or more without being touched.
The material can be customized to the customer’s specific operational cycle — if you need a plate to last 12 months to align with your maintenance schedule, ROXON engineers a plate to meet that exact threshold. In fact, the performance can even be guaranteed.
Where to use ROXDUR wear plates?
The application of ROXDUR wear plates is always estimated case by case. Identifying a site’s biggest wear challenges and analysing the performance of current liners provides data on where ROXDUR can be most effective.
Usually ROXDUR delivers the highest ROI in environments that have a high level of sliding abrasion, significant material drop heights or large rock sizes. Examples include crusher discharge zones, primary to secondary transfer chutes, high-capacity bulk handling ports, steel plant raw material transfer systems and large infrastructure and construction projects.
EHS and sustainability: the human element
Beyond the balance sheet, durability has a profound impact on Environment, Health, and Safety (EHS).
Every time a maintenance team enters a transfer chute to replace a liner, they are exposed to risks: working in confined spaces, lifting heavy items, exposure to dust and risk of falling. By extending the wear life, ROXDUR minimizes the number of high-risk entries required, making the plant fundamentally safer.
Sustainability is another concern. ROXDUR is produced in a Swedish foundry (Norrlandsgjuteriet AB) that utilizes 100% hydro and wind power. The iron used has a carbon footprint of only 4kg CO2 per tonne, and the use of recycled carbide further reduces the environmental impact. Also, as ROXDUR lasts longer than hardened steel, less of the material is needed.
The wear plate decision should not be evaluated as a consumable purchase but as a production asset. When considering cost of downtime, maintenance labor, production throughput, safety and sustainability ROXDUR is a strategic lever: the replacement of wear plates no longer needs to determine the maintenance cycle of the entire operation.
Engineering wear plates for life cycle value
By combining cemented carbide with a tough iron matrix through a patented casting process, ROXDUR delivers dramatically extended service life and lower risk of failing wear plates.
For managers and executives focused on uptime, safety, and ROI, ROXDUR represents a measurable operational advantage — not just a material upgrade.
Frequently Asked Questions:
Q: How is a composite wear plate different from traditional hardened steel liners?
A: Traditional hardened steel liners rely on a single material to provide both abrasion resistance and impact strength. This creates a performance compromise: increasing hardness improves sliding wear resistance but reduces toughness, making the material more brittle. ROXON’s ROXDUR material combines cemented carbide (for extreme hardness and abrasion resistance) with an iron matrix (for impact resistance). The metallurgical bond between these materials allows the liner to withstand both heavy impact and severe abrasion simultaneously — something single-material steel solutions cannot achieve.
Q: In which applications does a composite wear plate provide the greatest advantage?
A: The strongest performance gains occur in transfer points where both impact and sliding abrasion are present. Typical examples include crusher discharge zones, primary-to-secondary chute transfers, high-capacity mining operations, steel plant raw material handling, and bulk material ports. In these environments, composite wear plates can achieve 10–15 times longer service life compared to conventional hardened steel, significantly reducing maintenance shutdowns.
Q: Is a carbide wear plate suitable for high-impact applications, or is it too brittle?
A: Traditional solid carbide would be too brittle for high impact. However, ROXDUR’s composite design uses a tough iron matrix to absorb the energy from falling rocks and heavy materials, while the embedded carbide protects against sliding wear. This makes it ideal for primary and secondary crushers.
Q: Can ROXDUR plates be customized for existing chute dimensions?
A: Yes. A vast majority of ROXDUR installations involve replacing existing liners. ROXON engineers each solution based on the customer’s specific dimensions and thickness requirements.
