Solutions In Motion Blog - Cleveland Vibrator

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…

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2015: The Year of the Vibratory Table

By Katy Sabo

Jan 04

With a new exciting year in sight for me here at Cleveland Vibrator, I took some time to reminisce on some of my favorite FAB jobs that headed out of our facility throughout 2015. As I was perusing through my photo files, I found that our Vibratory Compaction Tables dominated this past year with our Vibratory Feeders running a close second. If you have read any of my other blogs, you will know that one of my favorite obligatory duties around here is filming equipment for quality assurance purposes before it leaves our manufacturing plant. Moreover, I love learning about new applications which our equipment will be used for and let me tell ya’, there were some pretty fun ones this year. So let’s take a trip down memory lane and get us stoked for the upcoming year folks!

At the beginning of last year, David Strong, Jack Steinbuch and myself took a maintenance visit to a customer right here in Cleveland to see one of our flat decks in the field. Read More…

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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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Cleveland Vibrator and the Chocolate Factory

By Katy Sabo

Dec 14

Anyone who knows me well knows about my undying love for chocolate. I had a great aunt who lived 98 wonderful, rich years and was as quick as a whip until her final days… so what was her secret? A piece of good quality chocolate a day will let you live long and prosper. I will never forget that and have adopted that mantra. Since I began working at Cleveland Vibrator over 5 years ago (wow times flies!) I have seen how industrial vibration mixes with some of my favorite things in life. One of which, if you haven’t guessed already, is chocolate.

I was perusing through our case history archives last week and found one dating back to the 1960s where industrial vibration was being used in a leading candy producer’s factory. Their chocolate molding department was encountering an air bubble problem in their molds during the filling process, 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…

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It’s Complicated, or Is It? The Frequency, Stroke & Acceleration Relationship

By Jack Steinbuch

Nov 30

Variable Frequency Drives (VFD) have become commonplace in many of our bulk material handling applications due to the adjustability they provide and the cost which has become more attractive over the years. However, I have found that many of our customers do not understand what they can achieve with this controller and how it affects acceleration when working with our electromechanically driven equipment featuring twin electric motor vibrators like our EMF vibratory feeders, EMS vibratory screeners and FA flat deck & GT grid top tables.

So we will start off with the fact that is contrary to what some might think – the lowering of the frequency does not affect the stroke being produced by the equipment. The stroke of the equipment can only be changed by mechanically adjusting the eccentric weight settings on the vibrators. Read More…

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How to Protect Your Vibrator Investment

By Mike Stratis

Nov 24

The Cleveland Vibrator Company has been manufacturing pneumatic piston vibrator units since 1923. Over the past 90+ years, we have learned a few things about how to protect your investment in an air piston vibrator. There are a few main procedures and components we strongly suggest and will review:

Air Supply
Exhaust Ports
Gaskets

The air supply should be dried and filtered, then regulated and once between 0-80 PSI, the air should be lubricated. We have Watts Filter-Regulator-Lubricators available ranging in size for 1/4″ to 1-1/”4 NPT. Glycerin filled regulator gauges help to read the PSI setting easily. Lightweight 10W/NR oil should be dropped into the airline prior to reaching the vibrator. We have pints of Vibra-Lube available to help save the search for this type of oil.

These TLC steps can double or triple the air piston vibrator’s life expectancy. Our dual-diameter piston design allows for start-up in any mounting position (e.g. at 30° on a vibratory feeder or 60° angle on a hopper or 90° on a vibratory table) and eliminates the need for a spring. The springless unit keeps replacement parts and internal components to a minimum. So, with a proper air supply plumbed to the vibrator and a low number of wearable parts, these units can last a long time and return the money on your investment. Read More…

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Vibration Force: Is Faster Actually Better?

By CVC Team

Nov 09

I have attached some photographs of a couple vibrators returned to Cleveland Vibrator for evaluation over the past year. It’s pretty clear that these units were not operated as per our operation manuals would instruct. Human nature causes us to try and make something work better or faster, we are the products of an an instant gratification way of life. We believe that products can work up to our lofty expectations even though we know it will work best to follow instructions in a user’s manual and to operate the product as instructed. As we used to hear at the beginning of the Six Million Dollar Man TV show many years past,”We have the technology to make it bigger, faster and stronger.” This hold true in many cases, especially relating to air piston vibrators, we shorten the life of the vibrator by believing we can use such technologies to override suggested operating specs. Read More…

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How to Reclaim up to 30% More of Your Ceramics Media

By Jeff Hochadel

Nov 02

During the process of manufacturing paints or other coatings, one of the steps involved is milling or grinding all of the dry ingredients into the liquid portion of the paint. These dry or solids consist of Titanium Dioxide (TIO2) pigments, binders, and various other powders. The liquid portion is mainly solvent or in the case of latex base – water. Once all of these dry ingredients have been thoroughly mixed (the proper term is dispersed) into the liquid base of the paint, the next step involves a high shear, high energy process called media milling.

In a nutshell, the paint is run through a chamber that has an enclosed horizontal shaft with discs or blades. The chamber is also filled with very small, spherical, grinding media. The media is made of different materials such as glass, steel, and ceramic media. Read More…

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