As it happens, I am rather new to this industry.  My background is primarily in the world of theoretical products and service of Enterprise Software systems and implementation consulting services.  Two years ago, the uses of industrial vibrators were pretty foreign to me and anyone that I would happen to correspond with on a day-to-day basis.  I, like most people in the world, didn’t really know what a critical role industrial vibration plays in our economy.  In coming to Cleveland Vibrator Company, I did know that we made a real, tangible, product that you could put your hand on and easily identify the differences in quality that make ours better than others in the market.  I was attracted to that.  In my first year of education on our market, though, my view of the value of our product offering rapidly expanded.

I started to learn about the breadth of applications that our products service: material flow from a bulk bin or hopper, separating or sizing metal powders, feeding metal parts for treatment, separating recyclable materials, packing bottle caps in gaylords.  The list seemed to go infinitely and continues to grow every day.  While most of the world is unaware of how industrial vibrators are used, what I came to realize is that nearly every application is critical to production of some product that ends up on the kitchen table or TV commercials.  If materials aren’t flowing in the production processes, the products that get bought and sold everyday, don’t get made.  Turns out, industrial vibrators have a big value.

$100,000/hour.  That was the amount that is still most memorable to me from my first days of education.  While it took some further learning for me to understand where powdered metals fit in our supply chain, I had pretty instant recognition of where diamonds fit in the global economy: those are expensive and I see a lot of them in magazines that my lovely wife reads. An equipment maker that makes screening machines for diamond mining, I learned, was using large rotary electric vibratory motors on their machines to move material through the screening process and separate diamonds from the other materials.  Due to the high-value of the process, the penalty for any downtime of the screening machines was $100,000/hour.  As the vibratory motors are really the only mechanism powering those machines and making material flow through, the responsibility for that $100,000/hour cost is almost entirely on those industrial vibrator motors.  For my early learning about our industry, this story was pretty poignant in highlighting the value our industrial vibrators really have in our market.  I hope to follow up with some more similar high value application stories in the future as well as other random ramblings and observations on the world of industrial vibration.

P.S.  While not entirely relevant to the point of this story, the diamond equipment maker had switched from a different brand of rotary electric vibratory motor to our brand and now “loses a lot less sleep and cost” due to the quality differences.

Craig Macklin

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