Commonly used at the coarser end of the comminution process, cone crushers often operate as the final crushing stage in the aggregate industry, or as the supplier of feed material for HPGRs or ball mills in the mining industry. As such, the performance of cone crushers undoubtedly affects the performance and efficiency of the overall process. The aim of this study is therefore to implement theoretical optimizations of compressive crushing for two different applications. Three different prototypes of crushing chambers have been manufactured based on the conceptual designs obtained from theoretical optimizations. Tested in full scale experiments, the results for these prototypes (designed for aggregate production and mining operation) were subsequently compared to the measured data for the corresponding reference crushing chambers. The performed analysis suggests that the performance of cone crushers can be improved in terms of product yield as well as reduction ratio. (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd.