When I first started at Cleveland Vibrator in ’68, we had an “Oldtimer” by the name of  Richard Placek who worked here and eventually retired from Cleveland Vibrator after over 40 years of loyal service. Rich was in charge of our tool and die area and among his many responsibilities was to build jigs and fixtures to assist in producing our many vibratory products. Along with that responsibility, Rich would  work with our local pattern maker and make any final adjustments to our mostly wooden pattern equipment before sending it on to the foundry for producing sample castings. Rich Placek was indeed a very valuable part of the organization. Back then, trade shows were very important to attend and exhibit our products produced and sold by Cleveland Vibrator. Rich came up with an ideal to make-up some small keychain vibrator blanks and hand out to interested visitors at our industrial shows. Our customers liked the small key chain type units and comments were made about turning them into working models. Of course this was music to Mr. Placek’s ears and he started working on a Cleveland Vibrator miniature vibrator. It actually turned out to be the very first prototype Vibra-Mite Vibrator which is now our primary line of vibrators, VM-25s in particular.

The letters VM came from Vibra-Mite, which is a play on words starting with “MIGHTY VIBRATOR” and the 25 came from the piston diameter  ¼” or .250”. Our customers soon discovered the applications are limitless and confined only to your imagination, I am of course quoting from the literature description of the Cleveland Vibrator VM-25 from that era. Besides small hoppers and feeder trays, the applications that really put this little jewel on the map was bowl feeders. In the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s through our present day, bowl feeders are used to orientate, count and even assemble parts. Bowl feeders were huge back in the 60’s thru 80’s and one of their major problems was parts jamming in the feed tracks slowing or stopping the process. They would mount the Miniature Cleveland Vibrator on the track area and if a jam occurred would energize the vibrator, clear the track and continue on with the process. Primary industries such as the fastener, automotive, pharmaceutical, electrical, plumbing, etc. had bowl feeder throughout their operations. The VM-25 quickly became the top selling vibrator and has stayed that way into 2014.

In those 50 years plus we have made value added improvements to include a tapped exhaust to add to a muffler or pipe the exhaust air away if needed. We have Super Grey coated the piston to assist in lubrication and help extend the life of the vibrator. We have recently made a design upgrade to manufacture the body from stainless steel plus changed the intake from a pushover requiring a clamp to a ¼” I.D. fitting that accepts standard ¼” O.D. tubing. We have added a VM-38 air piston vibrator which is a step up from our VM-25 and falls between the 25 and our ½” SA-EP vibrator. We have also looked into designing and building a VM-12 vibrator which would only have an 1/8” diameter piston but built with the same design features as our VM-25 and 38 models.

We are good listeners at Cleveland Vibrator – all of the changes, upgrades, and new models are a result from listening to our valued customers. Have a request? Please contact us here!