Great news! You decided to invest in customized fabricated vibratory equipment. Now it’s installed, working great, and you’re no longer dealing with costly, time-consuming material flow problems.
What’s next?
If you have worked with equipment in the past, you know that purchasing and installation is half of the battle. Whether you’re working with a vibratory feeder, screener, table, or any of our vibratory equipment options, maintenance is crucial to protect your investment long term. That’s why our team of experts is here to make this process easy! We compiled the list below so you know what to inspect, how often to inspect it, and what type of damage to look for when conducting regular equipment checks.
Joining The Cleveland Vibrator Company in February 2019, Derek Stake is now the Director of Engineering & Operations. As a Cleveland State University graduate, Derek provides extensive knowledge with a BA of Physics, BS of Mechanical Engineering, and MS of Mechanical Engineering. This CrossFit enthusiast offers years of engineering and operations expertise from his experience as Operations Manager at a local forging company. When not immersed in the world of vibration, you can find this Cleveland sports fan doing yard work and spending time with his wife and two kids!
As my incredibly knowledgeable associate, Mike Stratis, wrote a blog about accessories to consider for installing an air-powered vibrator, I thought I would provide a follow-up piece to discuss what to expect AFTER the install. As with any equipment, pneumatic vibrators and their supporting accessories require love, attention, lubrication, and cleaning. Here is what to expect if you want to get the longest and most consistent life out of your pneumatic vibrator, whether a piston, turbine,or ball.
Air Piston Pneumatic Vibrator
Lubrication
Firstly, you must check your lubricator with some frequency. If you operate continuously, you might check and/or refill every 1-3 weeks. If your use is intermittent or infrequent, you might schedule on a 1-4 month basis. The use of internal coating in the vibrator can reduce or remove the need for lubrication. But, coatings without lubrication will typically wear out faster than a coated or uncoated piston vibrator that is properly lubricated. Depending on the size and duty cycle of your vibrator, you might use a pint of lubricant every 2 weeks – 2 years. We recommend our MXR-12 VibraLube, which is 10W-NR.
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
When you supply a product that is the main drive source for a particular piece of equipment it, usually takes the first blame when the equipment doesn’t function properly. Such was the case back in July when one of our larger O.E.M. customers (Original Equipment Manufacturers) contacted us on a drive failure problem experienced by one of their customers who mine gold in Canada. The Rotary Electric Drives were mounted on a dewatering screener and per the end user customer they have experienced failure of 4 to 5 vibrator motors since May and normally they last for years. With Cleveland Vibrator on the nameplate of the vibrators, it was understandable the customer would look to Cleveland Vibrator for answers plus bear blame for their problems.
They contacted the O.E.M. who in turn called us to asked if we would call them directly. We followed up the same day and discovered with our initial conversation the motors were over 12 years old. This is a long time for a vibratory motor to last in this type of operation. Read More… Share this blog post:
From time to time you may have been faced with applications where the solutions offered don’t leave you fully comfortable to commit to a purchase. The solution may seem viable, but you just need that extra something before you can pull the trigger. While testimonials might do the trick, I suggest a trial or demo as a way to resolve your dilemma. Fortunately, some manufacturers offer trial units or demos that will allow you to try the specific item offered as a solution, or an alternate item that is similar enough to enable you to determine if the actual product is suitable.
People often contact us with unique applications where they believe an external vibrator might be applicable. Offering to send an air or electric powered vibrator on trial is often the best course of action if it is indeed an unusual application or the idea of trying it first is desirable. 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.
Being in this industry for a long time, we can relate to the uncertainty surrounding when you should grease your Rotary Electric Vibrators and how much grease you should apply. We offer an easy-to-follow installation and operation manual to our customers that discusses the specifics for each vibrator.
A section of the manual addresses proper greasing of the bearings, including when to apply the grease and how much to apply. The manual explains a ratio that takes into account the intervals vs. the actual running hours. This ratio will help determine when greasing the unit is necessary. There is, in my opinion, a “grey” area. Our Rotary Electric VIbrators need a certain amount of grease (measured in grams) to be adequately lubricated.
How do you determine the amount of grease for your rotary electric vibrator when the amount of grease per pump of the grease gun handle is unknown?
One method we’ve heard over the years is if the bearings begin to make noise, simply give each bearing five or six pumps from the grease gun and let it run for a few minutes. If this quiets the bearings after a few minutes, then you’re good to go. If not, repeat the process.
Is this recommended by The Cleveland Vibrator Company to properly lubricate the bearing? Well, no, it’s not. However, this type of greasing exists, and some swear by it. There is an old saying, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” and if it works for some folks, then we would not try to change the way they do it. However, for a straightforward approach, we looked at the amount of grease generated by one pump of a standard manual lever-operated grease gun and headed to our testing lab.
We took our standard grease gun, which uses a 14.8 ounce/420-gram cartridge, weighed out how much grease was in one pump, and then converted it to grams. We checked what the standard amount of grease would be for a grease gun of this size. The amount varied from 1.25 grams per pump to 2.25 grams, depending on how efficient your grease gun was.
A quick note that the grease we use is PREMALUBE Heavy-duty NLG1 #2 Multi-Purpose Grease H2, the manufacturer is Lubemaster. If you are working with a pneumatic vibrator, we have a blog that outlines what lubrications should NOT be used for your unit, click here to check that out.
We took many circumstances into account when performing our testing of the grease gun in our lab, such as:
The greasing procedure is not perfect
The effect of different operators
Condition of the grease fittings
Environmental temperature
The condition of the grease gun
We went with 2.0 grams per pump, even with our measured weight being closer to 1.75 per pump. You can damage the bearing and cause premature failure of the unit, so it is essential to not over-grease. We concluded 2.0 grams per pump is best to prevent under-greasing as well. Refer to our RE 1200 RPM Rotary Electric Motor greasing chart illustrated below: “RE 80-6 Vibrator.” The chart indicates that adding 50 grams of grease per bearing after 1600 hrs, at 2.0 grams per pump, would be 25 pumps of the grease gun, and would add a plus or minus 10 to 20% facture to this.
You should note that you can also do half-life greasing which in the RE 80-6 case would be 12 or 13 pumps per bearing. We have included greasing charts for all RPMs below. Note that some models are permanently lubricated at the factory.
Need more information about the maintenance of your vibratory equipment? We are here to help! Click here to speak to our knowledgeable Sales & Services Team.
My mom just had her 80th birthday the other day. To celebrate the milestone, one of my sisters and her husband are taking my mom on an Alaskan cruise, I’m sure it will be a great adventure. A few years back I had the opportunity to visit Alaska as part of a Cleveland Vibrator Company project, I was there to provide start up assistance and review the installation of a piece our equipment. From start to finish it was a very interesting application of mechanical vibration to assist in the compaction of a dry material. Throw in a trip to Alaska and it became quite memorable.
Cleveland Vibrator Company was contacted by a large engineering firm that was involved in a remediation project at a military installation in Alaska. The company was removing contaminated soil from the site. The soil was to be placed in steel containers and shipped off site. Their challenge to us was to increase the density of the soil, put more material in the box than could be accomplished with just “dumping” soil into the container. Read More… Share this blog post:
Like a lot of companies we talk a lot about customer service and going the extra mile when particular situations arise. Last week we had just one of those situations involving one of our larger RE 80-6 Rotary Electric Vibrators. The customer was in Texas and had a vibrator go down on a large de-watering screener. Fortunately, they had followed our suggestion and purchased a spare backup drive. They now wanted to order a replacement for that one but we had just recently sold all of our stock in that size to one customer. The drives are used on a critical piece of production equipment and could ill afford having a second drive go down.
With no spare available, we looked at up-sizing but mounting bolt centers would be a problem. We looked at different RPM motors with same bolt centers but after consulting with our equipment “GURU” Read More… Share this blog post:
The Cleveland Vibrator Company takes great pride in our Cleveland Quality products made with the highest finesse and expertise. Each Vibrator is individually crafted to fit every customer’s needs across a plethora of industries which gives us the ultimate diversity of our product line as well. The quality of our different vibrators, i.e. Air Piston Vibrators, Electromagnetic, Turbines, & Rotary Electrics, are superior to your run-of-the-mill vibrators due in large part to gaining such a in-depth understanding of the the many industries we serve through years of experience. Let’s be real, a company who has been in business since 1923 is bound to be more remarkable in quality than most, otherwise why would we still be in business? Once our products leave our shop, they are put to the test in the field – they are subjected to the tough manufacturing life where they operate day-in and day-out at high capacities, but with this something amazing happens to prove that Cleveland Vibrators are the best… Read More… Share this blog post:
