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Strategies & Market Trends : Joe Copia's daytrades/investments and thoughts -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Joe Copia who wrote (2983)	5/19/1998 7:34:00 AM
From: Wayne Rumball	Respond to of 25711

For those still long on FASC, here's an encouraging report; To: C. Lawrence Perkins (179 ) From: Lee Bush Monday, May 18 1998 4:53PM ET Reply # of 181 All: Just returned from a long weekend including a visit to FASC plant in Bakersfield. I spent about an hour looking over the plant installation. Mary Stevenson (girl friday) and Tony (plant operator) were most gracious and informative. As of Friday, the plant was still running the jack beans, however trucks were unloading potash on a cement pad in preparation for processing that contract. Only one machine was in operation as the jack beans are so light, they have a conveyor belt feed problem on one machine. The beans are being reduced to about 200 mesh under low temperature conditions. The plants are cooled with an air conditioning system to prevent overheating during the ultrasound pass. The plants are really very compact and appear to be rather a simple process. Material is loaded into hoppers which feed the crushing bin via a rubber conveyor belt. Inside the bin is a wheel with short segments of chain attached. These chains are about 18 or so inches in length and the links are perhaps three inches long. The chains crush the material in preparation for the ultrasound treatment, which occurs at the base of the same bin. Now the chains wear and must be replaced, depending upon the type of materials being processed. The most abrasive materials they have tried thusfar was lava ore. The chains only lasted about 20 minutes grinding that up. The wheel that the chains are attached to can be removed and replaced in about six minutes (best time Tony said). After a run of materials, it requires 3 hours to clean up the plant in preparation for running new materials. The bins have to be cleaned, clean-out hatches removed on pipes, etc. All dust from the grinding is filtered out, so there is no pollution introduced from the grinding process, at least there was none for the bean runs. I'm not sure how limestone would behave. Mary was encouraging concerning the financing. Should come through in a week to two weeks, she heard. That's about it. If you have questions, fire away. Lee