We were contacted by a company that performs a special process on large diameter copper bars. Part of the process is seating the copper bars in place to do the process. This is currently accomplished by hitting the bars with an 8 to 12 pound sledge hammer. Due to the taxing and power-filled motion of the hammering process, it was causing extensive shoulder and back injuries on their employees. The situation was dire enough that it required a call to action and a solution, so they contacted The Cleveland Vibrator for a vibrator recommendation. Read More…
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 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
Vaccum Mount Series explains features and what sets Cleveland Vibrator above the rest – See it in action here!
Most everyone over, say, 25, knows that time seems to escape you way faster than you’d like. That certainly happens here at Cleveland Vibrator – you turn around and another year or two is gone and you wonder what the heck happen to it. I really felt that way here recently as we just finished up work on a new product. Sales has been pushing for a “Vacuum Mounted Vibrator Series” for a while now and I’m happy to say we’ve just completed work on the mount and controls for our 1200 VMSAC, air -cushioned piston vibrator and the smaller 1125 VMSAC.
I’ve been told that my last blog regarding the importance of wall thickness when utilizing external industrial vibrators for bins or hoppers seems to have struck a chord. I plan to expand on that blog by providing some recommendations for sizing external vibrators since I merely referred to a vibrator with proper force previously – and you just may have been afraid to ask!
Essentially, we need to apply enough external force to the wall of the bin or hopper to assist gravity in getting material to flow. While I previously stressed properly flexing of the wall to get the material to flow, we still need to determine the correct amount of force to apply based on the configuration of the hopper as well as the bulk density and flowability of the material. Read More…
Jack Steinbuch has been with The Cleveland Vibrator Company for over 36 years accumulatively. He has previous experience in the manufacturing industry as a Senior Application Engineer and has worn many hats on our team in sales and managerial capacities. Now, he’s in the position of General Sales Manager. With a BSCE from The University of Toledo, he is an expert in the realm of sizing vibratory screeners and feeders, and sizing vibratory drives for tables and other vibratory equipment. Understanding that customer service is crucial, Jack believes it is important to provide the proper product for every application, even if it happens to not be supplied by The Cleveland Vibrator Company.
In his off-hours, you can find Jack spending time with his family and playing with his grandchildren. He loves sports; both watching and playing, and is an avid golfer and a league bowler during the winter. He will be retiring at the end of September 2021 and hopes to spend his winters vacationing in Florida.
“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 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
“Bend, but don’t break” is an old football saying that refers to a defense that “allows” the opposing team to move the ball down the field on offense, but ultimately prevents them from scoring touchdowns. While it’s not a perfect analogy, you could apply this statement to recommending externally mounted vibrators to aid in the flow of material down hoppers, bins, and chutes without damaging the mounting surface.
Our challenge is to recommend a vibrator that will flex (bend) the wall or surface where it’s mounted to aid in the flow of material but not break it. Some people do not use certain external vibrators as they’ve had the bad experience of cracking the mounting surface. It’s easy to blame that style of vibrator, or vibrators in general, and look for some other method to get their material to flow. Here, I will explain how vibrators should be utilized without damaging the mounting surface.
Jack Steinbuch has been with The Cleveland Vibrator Company for over 36 years accumulatively. He has previous experience in the manufacturing industry as a Senior Application Engineer and has worn many hats on our team in sales and managerial capacities. Now, he’s in the position of General Sales Manager. With a BSCE from The University of Toledo, he is an expert in the realm of sizing vibratory screeners and feeders, and sizing vibratory drives for tables and other vibratory equipment. Understanding that customer service is crucial, Jack believes it is important to provide the proper product for every application, even if it happens to not be supplied by The Cleveland Vibrator Company.
In his off-hours, you can find Jack spending time with his family and playing with his grandchildren. He loves sports; both watching and playing, and is an avid golfer and a league bowler during the winter. He will be retiring at the end of September 2021 and hopes to spend his winters vacationing in Florida.
I recently finished a two-day safe grain handling course at the Asmark Institute in Bloomington, Illinois. This is part of our continuing efforts to learn more about grain, feed mill, and silo safety in our on-going efforts to assist in these areas. Cleveland Vibrator has manufactured and supplied vibrators to these industries for several decades but has never, until now, involved itself in the safety part of this industry beyond supplying vibrators as flow aides.
“What’s the amplitude of that industrial vibrator?” – I hear this question more often than one might think.
You’d think it’d be a simple question to answer. But, with industrial vibrators, it just doesn’t make sense and isn’t relevant to most applications. In my book, no vibrator has “an amplitude.” However, without a doubt, each vibrator model has unique performance characteristics that we can measure and record.
1200 VMSAC on pellet mill station bin
Once we understand the requirements for the application, like a vibrator on a bin or hopper to assist in material flow or mounted on a piece of equipment, the vibrator performance characteristics help our sales and engineering staff make the best recommendation for optimal performance. But you can’t say, “I need a vibrator with an amplitude of X,” and get several options.
What structure characteristics affect the amplitude of vibration?
When you start thinking about the amplitude of movement of anything with a vibrator attached to it, you’ve got to ask yourself several additional questions:
What’s the weight and wall thickness of the structure?
Is there isolation involved or is it rigidly fixed to a support?
Is the goal to move or compact material or just introduce “movement” in a section of the structure?
With vibrating equipment, it is relatively easy to calculate the expected “amplitude” of the finished unit while we’re still in the design phase. Using solid modeling, we have a good sense of the weight of the unit. Put this together with the performance parameters of the vibrator and we can accurately predict the expected amplitude of the finished unit. Take the weight of the unit, frequency of the vibrator, and its known force, toss in a conversion factor, and you can kick out a decent estimated amplitude of the completed assembly. This helps us predict the performance and capacity of the equipment, be it a feeder, screener, or compaction table.
What factors does the amplitude of vibration depend on?
When asked, “Hey, what’s the amplitude of the 1200 VMSAC Pneumatic Vibrator?” you can’t fire back, “Oh, it’s 0.157 of an inch”. Unfortunately, it just doesn’t work that way. Amplitude is not an independent parameter of the vibrator. Amplitude depends on two factors:
The structure to which the vibrator is mounted
The freedom of movement of that structure
What hopper characteristics are important for industrial vibrator installation?
Frequently, the customer is trying to improve bulk material flow in a storage container. Typically, the amplitude of the vibrator doesn’t solve bulk material flow problems. Over the company’s history, The Cleveland Vibrator Company has developed sizing charts and guidelines for hopper applications; this involves the characteristics of the hopper, including the following:
Hopper wall thickness
Volume of the hopper
Sometimes material type, if it is difficult to move or sticky
I can’t recall anyone in sales or engineering telling a customer they need a specific vibration amplitude. There are times when the nature of the material will lead us to recommend a “larger stroke or amplitude.” With rotary electric vibrators, this translates to a lower frequency vibrator, resulting in larger vibration amplitude. Given the same force output, a slower frequency vibrator will produce a larger amplitude or stroke when compared to a higher frequency vibrator on the same structure.
Turbomite Turbine Vibrator
As a side note, this relation leads to one of our primary design considerations for our Turbomite Pneumatic Turbine Vibrator line. You will notice we produce forces similar to our competitors at much lower frequencies.
The application of industrial vibrators is rarely an exact science – here’s how we can help!
There are many years of experience here at The Cleveland Vibrator Company. Folks have seen and heard about hundreds, if not thousands, of applications over the years. But what keeps things interesting is the challenge of a new application where you need to explore your options.
We can reach back into the knowledge base and make a good recommendation more often than not. If that doesn’t seem to be the best route, we can generate a computer solid model and run an FEA analysis. This may give us a better prediction of the amplitude of a vibrator-structure assembly. But let’s not use that approach to apply a VM-25 Air Piston Vibrator on a thin-walled hopper section. It’s probably more cost-effective to simply buy one and try one! On the other hand, you could always ask about our 30 day trial period.
We were recently asked by one of our foundry customers to quote our 1200 SI Air Knockers to replace hammers used by his employees to beat on the side of casting forms in order to free the casting from the mold. Because of the current process, they currently have two employees on workman’s compensation with carpal tunnel problems related to using hammers to loosen the castings. With the SI series developed to replace such manual processes, we can mount the vibrator on the mold and control the number of hits per minute plus control the force of the impact that the piston strikes the mold with our timer and five port spool valve set up. This simple solution can not only save the health of the employees, but also thousands of dollars in lost time and claims. If you have a manual process requiring employees to use hammers to dislodge material from molds, bins, hoppers or chutes, contact us to see if we can help. Share this blog post:
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 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
