Industrial Vibration Industry Watch

Using Vibration to Reduce Material Cost and Increase Profit Margins in the Plastics Industry

Using Vibration to Reduce Material Cost and Increase Profit Margins in the Plastics Industry

By Cleveland Vibrator Team

Nov 04

Industrial vibration can be found in multiple areas of plastics processing and can help reduce the costs of materials and increase profit margins substantially. With the use of equipment such as vibratory screeners, companies are able to reuse regrind and efficiently sort out the usable material from that of which needs to be discarded. There are other ways that industrial vibration factors into the processing of plastic products, read on to learn more.

What exactly is “Regrind?” Regrind is a term that seems self-explanatory and if you guessed that the it applies to mechanically reduced plastic components/products, you guessed right. Much of the plastic waste used in this process usually comes from a pre-consumer source, for instance processed scraps or even unused thermoplastic materials from injection molding. Read More…

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And Now for Something Completely Different…

And Now for Something Completely Different…

By Craig Macklin

Sep 29

Frequent readers of this blog (don’t be scared to raise your hand and comment, by the way…) may remember a post about unique applications of industrial vibrators in 2013. Well, this week we had a new inquiry from a drop-by guest that is in the running for 2014.

Value of Industrial Vibration Part 2: $30 per Gaylord

By Craig Macklin

Aug 25

While not as large of a figure as in Part 1, this number can sure add up over the course of the year for many manufacturers of bulk products such as powder metals, plastic pellets, bulk foods, metal parts and chemicals who can use thousands or tens-of-thousands of Gaylords in a year for packaging their products for shipment. At $30 or more per Gaylord box, that can translate to annual costs of $300,000 plus per year.

Why am I bringing this up? Because industrial vibration, most often in the form of vibratory tables, is a proven solution to reduce number of Gaylords, IBCs, or drums used to package bulk material shipments. 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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Top 6 Ways to Keep Your Employees Safe in the Grain Handling Industry

Top 6 Ways to Keep Your Employees Safe in the Grain Handling Industry

By Cleveland Vibrator Team

Jul 28

Valuing your worker’s safety and well-being are ideas that most can agree on is crucial for company success within dangerous industries such as Grain Handling. Part of my job is updating our Twitter Feed and keeping an eye out for industry news via shared stories and retweets by some of the most credible sources in the material handling industries. Recently, I have been seeing numerous stories about grain entrapment accidents and can’t help but wonder, why does this keep occurring when preventive measures are available? Read More…
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Industrial Vibration to Unstick Things

By Craig Macklin

Jul 21

Many applications of industrial vibrators are for material flow in hoppers, bins, chutes, and pipes; or material settling and de-airing. However, we frequently come across customers that don’t work with dry bulk materials or wet cast product. Instead, they are looking to apply vibration to their process to “un-stick” their wet, sticky materials from the walls of their equipment.

If we relate this to an everyday experience, picture-grabbing ice cubes from the freezer for your glass of lemonade. You get a clump of them that bonded, and they won’t fit in your glass. So, what do you do? Apply a little energy to them with some impact force (bang them on the counter) and break those bonds. Cold lemonade success!

Vibrators Don’t Damage Equipment, Wrong Installations Do

By Craig Macklin

May 12

Sterling Systems micro ingredient batching systems-closeup

Recently, I took a whirlwind trip through the heartland. During this trip, I had the opportunity to visit plants and equipment makers installing and using vibrators. While in the field, I encountered damaged equipment, including cracked hopper walls that had to be re-welded.

Too often, the vibrator gets a bad rap in these situations. However, in reality, the damage is a function of incorrect sizing or installation of the vibrator. So to clear up any misconceptions, here are three easy recommendations to prevent future equipment damage:

Grain Entrapment and Engulfment: Rail Cars

By Craig Macklin

Mar 24

Well, this sad news was released recently: “Worker Engulfed in Rail Car…” which made me revisit my prior post to dig into data some more. Once again, I went to the data set provided by NPR Buried in Grain. This time I looked only for “rail car” in the incidents and found two in the data set. While the two incidents in the data set both correspond to workers trying to clear clogs while unloading the rail car hoppers, this new incident does not. Its cause was related to the worker slipping and falling while loading the car. Either way, these incidents are terrible, tragic and preventable with proper safety precautions and training. Rail car vibrators are one tool to help prevent bin or hopper entry during unloading. I encourage anyone following these continued incidents to look into resources available from organizations such as the Grain Handling Safety Coalition.

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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Best of 2013: Most Unique Vibrator Applications

By Craig Macklin

Jan 27

“If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.”
― Nikola Tesla

As we are coming up on the anniversary of his death (January 7, 1943), this post will honor a man who came up with some of the most unique application of vibration for his time, Nikola Tesla. His creation of the “Earthquake Machine” and use of vibratory tables to relieve Samuel Clemens from constipation (It’s true. I read it on the internet.), will be hard to match innovations. However, on reflecting on 2013, I want to quickly highlight two of our customer’s applications of our vibrators that stood out as unique and noteworthy: 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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More Grain Entrapment and Engulfment: Hopper Bottoms

By Craig Macklin

Oct 11

As further follow-on to my previous post, I wanted to look at a specific subset of Grain Entrapment and Engulfment cases. As I mentioned, I don’t think industrial vibrators and/or timed knockers are the silver bullet for preventing all cases. However, I do think they can be effective for 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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Grain Entrapment and Engulfment

By Craig Macklin

Jul 26

Due in a large part to the efforts of NPR, I recently became more aware and educated on a tragic and horrifying issue in the Feed and Grain industry: Grain Entrapment and Engulfment. Basically, this is the incidence of being buried and/or drowned in bulk grain. I shudder to even think about the experience.

Reading through NPR’s listing of incidents, I noticed a couple of things that had me thinking more about why this is happening and whether Cleveland Vibrator Company might play a part in future prevention. First, the incidents reported seem to be more frequent in the past few years. Second, there is some recurrence of incidents stemming from people climbing into bins, hoppers and silos that have stuck material in order to “unstick” it.

Certainly, the second item connected with me as we are a manufacturer of material flow aids, like industrial vibrators and knockers, that are used to prevent or correct material sticking, clogging, rat-holing and bridging. I wanted to learn more about what we could do. So, I called 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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