From my perspective industrial applications for vibrators and vibratory equipment tend to fall into three broad categories.  The first and largest of these groups is the “standard” application, whether for individual vibrators or for equipment.  Similar problems have been seen before and solved with “off the shelf products”.  In the world of individual vibrators, these standard applications tend to involve flow aids for stationary hoppers and bins where both pneumatic and electric vibrators have proven over the years to be viable solutions.  Appropriate vibrators can be selected or recommended based on the size of the hopper, weight of the material, hopper design (to include shape and wall thickness) and nature of the material.

My second broad group is somewhat smaller than the “standard” group and involves more customer interaction and discussion to arrive upon a suitable solution. These types of challenges would fall into what I’d call the “cooperative” group.  Cleveland Vibrator Company (CVC) begins a dialogue with the customer; what are they trying to accomplish, what are the parameters of the problem, limitations, and expectations?  Successful solutions often involve applying a standard product in a new way or even the modification of that standard unit.   Cooperative group applications and solutions can benefit other customers who might be experiencing similar challenges.

My third application group is the smallest and often presents the most demanding solutions.  These problems arise when a potential customer starts to really think “outside the box” and explore the “what ifs” of industrial vibration.  My “What If” group has, over time, stretched the thinking within the company, challenged us to step back and think about a problem from a new perspective and wonder “what if” along with the customer.  I can think of a couple of today’s standard products that came out of the “what if” group and have found a happy home with our main stream core products.

I’d like to talk briefly about a recent cooperative group application and solution.  Some time back, I was contacted by the owner of a small trucking firm.  The gentleman was faced with the problem of getting material out of his trucks in a more efficient manner.  During dumping some material would hang up in the truck and cost delays in offloading.  For this owner, as with many folks, “Time is Money” both for him and his drivers.  The Standard group solution would have been the application of pneumatic vibrator such as the 1200 VMS or VMR or an electric model.  During our discussion the end user shared his goals for the solution beyond simply aiding in the discharge of the material.  The solution needed to be compact, lightweight, maintenance free, easy to mount and dismount, pneumatic powered and limited by the capacity on-board the truck to generate compressed air.  Finally it had to be reasonably priced as he expected that each driver would be responsible the cost of the “solution.”

Thinking about our product line with the success parameters in mind the logical choice seemed to be the use of a turbine vibrator.  The turbine vibrator is compact, maintenance free, uses significantly less compressed air than a piston vibrator or a similar force output ball vibrator and is a cost effective option.  The CVT-80 turbine vibrator seemed like a reasonable choice.  Weighing less than three pounds it met the lightweight criteria.  Operating at 60 psi, the vibrator only uses 4 cfm of compressed air and produces over 420 pounds of force.  So we could produce a reasonable amount of force while working within the limitations of the truck air supply.  The CVT-80 uses a permanently lubricated bearing and requires no maintenance, which fit well with the customer’s goals.

We just needed a clean solution to the mounting problem.  What was the best way to mount the vibrator so that we could effectively apply the produced vibration without modifying the truck?

During our back and forth discussions and emails, the Owner mentioned that the trucks had “knocker rails” on the sides of the bed.  I wasn’t familiar with this term or item so it was a bit difficult to understand how this might be a benefit to the solution.  Some place along the line I got a rough sketch of the “knocker rail” profile, its arrival was followed shortly by the “ah ha” moment.  A mounting bracket was designed around this profile to which we could attach a CVT-80 turbine vibrator. The mounting bracket was designed to slip over the thick edge of the rail and then clamp into position on the thinner section of the profile and held in place with two ¾-10 bolts.  With the CVT-80 bolted to the mounting bracket, the complete assembly can be installed on the truck any place on the knocker rail very quickly and easily, ready for operation in moments.

Cleveland Vibrator produced a prototype of the bracket and we provided the bracket-turbine assembly to the customer for testing and evaluation.  The CVC solution proved to be just what the customer was looking for, quick, easy and effective.   Since developing this item for a single end user, other customers have discovered this item and found it to be effective for their applications as well.  This is often the case with a cooperative group solution, there are usually many others struggling with a similar challenge and don’t know that there’s a solution waiting for their discovery.

We’ve gone on to include this “unique” solution as a standard item, becoming part of our product offerings within the area of portable vibrators.