Industrial Vibrator Beat Archives

What Are the Costs Associated with Installing Pneumatic Vibrators?

By Mike Stratis

Jul 25

When it comes time to review solutions to the material flow problems inside the hopper, pipe, or chute, there are a few things to keep in mind when putting together a budget for the project. Besides the vibratory flow aid itself, there are additional components required before installing the unit. We will discuss these items and estimated costs of acquiring these components. Here is the shortlist:

Industrial vibrator – pneumatic piston vibrator, single impact air knocker, pneumatic turbine vibrator, pneumatic ball vibrator
Safety cable
Mounting channel or plate
Hose to connect the vibrator to the on/off valve
On/off valve
Hose to connect on/off valve to air prep component (filter/regulator or filter/regulator/lubricator)
Lubricant (if necessary)

Depending on the size of the hopper or piece of equipment that the pneumatic vibrator is going to be installed on, the price of the vibrator itself can range from about $100 to as much as $10,000. But, within that range, the vast majority of the units are going to be between $100-$1000. Read More…

Mike Stratis

Mike joined The Cleveland Vibrator Company team in 2013 with prior experience in manufacturing sales with a Cleveland company in the tool and die industry. Now, he’s the Director of Sales and specializes in “making stuff that shakes stuff”.

When he’s not immersed in the world of industrial vibration, as rare as that might be, Mike keeps busy *not finishing in last place* in Fantasy Football and enjoys spending time with his wife and three kids. It’s always golf season for Mike, and he’s been known to 3 putt his way around any course and can roll tee balls in rain or shine. You can find him tailgating in the Muni Lot before Browns games or supporting local breweries.

As an avid provider of #VibrationEducation, he offers this free bit of advice, “Not all vibration is the same. Force and frequency do matter!” However, there is a 2% upcharge for all Michigan and Steeler’s fans.

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Vibrator Coating Testing Results: Only Time Will Tell

By CVC Team

Jun 27

Some time back in the mid-60s Cleveland Vibrator started working with coating technology in an effort to improve the performance and longevity of our line of pneumatic piston vibrators. For best operation, while consuming a minimum of compressed air, the piston and the body of any pneumatic piston vibrator need to be very closely matched. Clearance between the moving piston and the fixed body is very fine, in certain installation orientations, the piston rides on the body of the vibrator creating a metal-on-metal contact area. Because of the metal-on-metal contact, it is recommended to supply a pneumatic piston vibrator with lubricated air. The appropriate amount of oil mist in the air stream will lubricate the moving parts, reducing the coefficient of friction between the surfaces and extend the life of the vibrator.

Cleveland Vibrator’s investigation into and early use of friction-reducing coatings was designed to leverage the benefits of the coating to enhance the performance and extend the life of the vibrator by reducing parts wear due to friction. If not properly maintained and lubricated a piston vibrator will start to wear due to the piston/body surface contact. Indicators of excessive wear will be reduced performance, less force output, and more air consumed at the same operating pressure. As the piston and body wear over time, the gap between the two parts will increase, with the larger spacing air can “blow by” the piston, blow by air isn’t effectively used by the vibrator to generate force it simply exhausts out of the body. Read More…

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Truck & Trailer Loads Demand A Tough Solution – What Are Your Vibratory Options?

By Mike Stratis

Jun 06

When it comes to unloading dry or semi-dry bulk materials from a hopper trailer, belly dump, side dump, end dump, or similar type of truck, a few vibratory options are available to the market. Depending on the power supply available on the mobile equipment, air or electric, the vibratory components change. We will first look at the air-powered vibrator options then turn to the electric-powered vibrator options.

Air Powered Options

Piston Style Vibrator

The pneumatic or air-powered units that are available are the piston-style vibrator or the turbine-style vibrator. These two are by far the most common air-powered vibrators found on mobile equipment. The Vibra-Might Air Piston Vibrators are popular units in the field because these vibrators have a dual-diameter piston that allows for start-up at any mounting angle, and there is no spring on the inside of the vibrator. No spring = less wear parts.

These vibrators also have a single exhaust port and come standard with the exhaust port protector. The exhaust port protector helps keep dust, dirt, water, and other contaminants out of the bore of the vibrator. These Vibra-Might air piston vibrators come in both 4-bolt square base and 2-bolt rectangular base designs. The 2-bolt design is more common, and the slotted bolt holes of the 1200 VMR (impacting piston) or 1200 VMRAC (non-impacting piston) cover a wide range of new or existing bolt patterns. Also, if there is no oiler or lubricator on the truck itself, we offer coated casted bodies that can operate with or without lubricant. Adding lubricant will help the longevity of the vibrator, but it is not necessary.

Sizing and Selecting Air Piston Vibrators for Conical Silos

By Mike Stratis

May 02

When turning to a pneumatic air piston vibrator for bin cleanout or bulk material flow for your material storage vessel with a conical silo transition hopper, there are a few things we review to help determine the best unit for the job. Here are the various sets of criteria we review before making a recommendation:

Number of vibrators needed
Strength of vibrator needed
Best air piston vibrator for application

Step One: Find the Number of Vibrators Needed

We look at the geometry of the vessel to find the number of vibrators recommended for the conical silo hopper. The vessel’s geometry, size, and shape tell us the number of vibrators needed for the most effective vibration transfer into the material. There are about 5 feet of effective radius for the vibration energy from where the vibrator is mounted. Here is a visual aid that allows you to see how many vibrators are needed based on the size of your hopper.

Niche Business, It’s What We Do

By CVC Team

Mar 21

All organizations that have stayed in business for many years have “go-to folks” they depend on when difficult situations or tough problems arise that need to be taken care of. For example, how many times have we watched a football game and experienced the quarterback take his team 90 yards in under two minutes to win a game or the linebacker or safety make that key tackle or interception for a last minute victory? If you root for every team but the Browns, we’re sure you’ve experienced this enough to know the importance the role these key players fulfill. These are go to folks and it is no different in the business world, especially here at The Cleveland Vibrator Co.

I think we are blessed with several go to folks on our team. When a customer calls Cleveland Vibrator, they are not just talking to a sales associate but to engineering, manufacturing, purchasing, marketing, shipping and yes, even our owners from time to time. I believe this collectively makes Cleveland Vibrator a “go to company” for many special applications. I call this our “NICHE” business and feel it has been one of Cleveland Vibrator’s strengths, even before I was given the opportunity to join the team in 1968. Read More…
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How to Operate Cleveland Vibrator’s Vacuum Mounted Series Units

By Mike Stratis

Mar 07

The Cleveland Vibrator Company has been manufacturing pneumatic piston vibrators since 1923. During that time, there have been a wide range of new products developed and released as the industries change. A great recent example of this innovation is the Vacuum Mount Vibrator Series.

The first generation of the Vacuum Mount family was designed around the flagship product, air piston vibrators, to accommodate a wide range of applications and mounting locations. The air piston vibrators that are used are the VMSAC models, these are the non-impacting or air-cushioned piston vibrators. The reason for the non-impacting model is because the impacting model’s steel piston inside the ductile iron casted body provides a large amount of force that actually breaks the suction of the vacuum cup when installed on a bin, hopper trailer, dump bed truck, slip form or other application.

After the success of the first generation, with the VMSAC models, we expanded into the pneumatic turbine vibrators. This has allows us to provide many more options and sizes to help meet the demands of the user’s application. The original family within the product line contained four models (1125 VMSAC, Read More…

Mike Stratis

Mike joined The Cleveland Vibrator Company team in 2013 with prior experience in manufacturing sales with a Cleveland company in the tool and die industry. Now, he’s the Director of Sales and specializes in “making stuff that shakes stuff”.

When he’s not immersed in the world of industrial vibration, as rare as that might be, Mike keeps busy *not finishing in last place* in Fantasy Football and enjoys spending time with his wife and three kids. It’s always golf season for Mike, and he’s been known to 3 putt his way around any course and can roll tee balls in rain or shine. You can find him tailgating in the Muni Lot before Browns games or supporting local breweries.

As an avid provider of #VibrationEducation, he offers this free bit of advice, “Not all vibration is the same. Force and frequency do matter!” However, there is a 2% upcharge for all Michigan and Steeler’s fans.

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Tired of Using the Hammer?

By Mike Stratis

Jan 25

There is something to be said about the functionality of a hammer. These tools can be used for a variety of applications, constructive or destructive purposes and are often lightweight components which makes them easy to carry around a shop floor. In this industry, we see and hear them used on day bins, surge bins, bulk storage hoppers, material transfer pipes and other similar equipment to break up bridging or rat-holing product and promote material flow. While this is certainly a quick fix and can help the material flow problems that day, there are a few potential long term issues that can arise when using a dead blow or sledge hammer to break loose the material.

First thing that comes to mind for the Cleveland Vibrator team, and most importantly in our eyes, is the safety of the operator. When using these hammers on bin or hopper, many times the operator is lifting the hammer above shoulder level and swinging up at a bin on a regular basis. Read More…

Mike Stratis

Mike joined The Cleveland Vibrator Company team in 2013 with prior experience in manufacturing sales with a Cleveland company in the tool and die industry. Now, he’s the Director of Sales and specializes in “making stuff that shakes stuff”.

When he’s not immersed in the world of industrial vibration, as rare as that might be, Mike keeps busy *not finishing in last place* in Fantasy Football and enjoys spending time with his wife and three kids. It’s always golf season for Mike, and he’s been known to 3 putt his way around any course and can roll tee balls in rain or shine. You can find him tailgating in the Muni Lot before Browns games or supporting local breweries.

As an avid provider of #VibrationEducation, he offers this free bit of advice, “Not all vibration is the same. Force and frequency do matter!” However, there is a 2% upcharge for all Michigan and Steeler’s fans.

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Paper or Plastic?

By CVC Team

Dec 29

I’m sure most of us remember the changeover push to convert our old standby of paper bags to plastic ones and how we somewhat resisted this at our local grocery stores. But as usual, with a little pushing from genius marketing gurus of our time, we eventually gave in and accepted the changeover. “Paper or Plastic” has pretty much disappeared to plastic only in today’s day-in-age.

I believe we went through the same changes as it pertains to electrical controls for our electric vibrators and vibratory equipment manufactured by The Cleveland Vibrator Company. When I started at CVC in the 60’s, pretty much all controls were steel construction with the NEMA 4X being stainless and the explosion proof enclosures were cast aluminum. We carried several types of sizes of NEMA-rated enclosures in stock just to try and cover all the bases. The responsibility of our sales team was to identify the NEMA-rated requirements of our customer’s application. This at times was easier said than done of course. Purchasing was given the responsibility of having the enclosures in stock plus having suppliers who could deliver the enclosures in a timely fashion when we experienced an out of stock situation. Lastly, of course, our manufacturing team was given the task of manufacturing the many types of controls required by our valued customers. Read More…
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Why Is My Bulk Material Feeding or Screening Inefficiently?

By CVC Team

Dec 21

Once again I’m touching on the topic of the proper setup of rotary electric vibrators (RE) when they’re used on vibratory equipment. Most of the vibratory equipment manufactured by The Cleveland Vibrator Company uses two rotary electric vibrators to produce linear vibration. Vibratory tables (FA), vibratory grid tables (GT), electromechanical screeners (EMS) and electromechanical feeders (EMF) are all designed for the vibrators to counter rotate. Again, counter rotation simply means that the vibrators rotate in different directions, one clockwise and the other counter clockwise. It doesn’t matter which vibrator of the pair rotates clockwise or counter clockwise, it’s just important that they both don’t rotate in the same direction.

I recently tagged along with Jack Steinbuch on a visit to a customer who was experiencing some problems with a vibratory hopper feeder (RFM). After inspecting the unit we asked the customer to remove the weight covers on the vibrators so we could check the rotation direction. Once the weight covers are removed from the same end of each vibrator it’s very easy to see the direction of rotation as the vibrators are started up. At startup it was clear that the vibrators were NOT counter rotating as required. Read More…
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Things to Stick a Vacuum Mount Vibrator On, Part 1

By Craig Macklin

Dec 07

Recently, Cleveland Vibrator Co. has been working on developing a series of Vacuum Mount Systems for our vibrators. Typically, these are used for helping flow or clean out on portable hoppers, bins, IBCs, hopper bottom and belly dump trailers, or railcars. However, our newest release, the Mini Turbine Vacuum Mount series, has a variety of other fun applications that we can demonstrate in our very own plant here.

The first application to look at here is the Vacuum Mount CVT-P-20 being used in our coil making process. Our line of CM Electromagnetic Vibrators uses encapsulated coils that we make in house. In that process, we use vibration in order to settle epoxy around the coil in a mold, removing air bubbles and eliminating voids. Typically, we have used our VJ Vibratory Jogger tables in order to do this. However, in the video linked here, you can Read More…

Craig Macklin

Craig Macklin joined The Cleveland Vibrator Company in 2010. Although his prior experience is mired in the world of theoretical, intangible products and services such as software and consulting sales, the past 11 years have developed his passion for this industry and molded the vibration expert we know today. Now, as President and CEO, Craig has a deep understanding of the value and importance of industrial vibration to numerous industries and applications. He enjoys fine, locally roasted espresso, good food, and spending the day with his wife and two daughters. He has cried at multiple Browns and Indians games and likes to get outside and golf in his free time.

What’s his area of expertise, you ask? “Making sure the people on our team are better and smarter than I am.” – Craig Macklin

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