Vibra Screw, Inc.has substantially expanded its vibratory feeder and conveyor lines through an exclusive license agreement with Mavi Maquinas Vibratorias Ltda, Brazil. The agreement, covering North America, gives Vibra Screw access to Mavi’s 50 years of experience which has made them the largest supplier of vibrating feeders and conveyors in South America. Using the latest resonant conveying technology, Vibra Screw can now offer vibrating conveyors up to 50ft. long and rates up to 8000 ft³/hr. The agreement also expands Vibra Screw’s range of vibrating spiral elevators, vibrating pan and tube feeders, and vibrating screens. With the right to manufacture all Mavi products in the USA, Vibra Screw will be able to offer their proven advanced technology in products made in the USA.
April 2015
Bin Activators are one of the most successful devices for ensuring flow of bulk material from storage. They can range in diameter from a couple of feet to 18 feet. Bin Activators can be extremely heavy, and while being subjected to vibration, must support the head load created by additional tons of material in the silo. Making a mistake in the design or material used in the hangers that support them can have catastrophic consequences.
Hangers perform two critical functions. First, they must safely carry the Activator and silo head load. Second, they must provide flexibility of movement under vibration and prevent transmission of that vibration to the stationery silo structure. Accordingly, they must be incredibly strong in tension yet free to move horizontally. Our experience has proven that forged steel hangers combined with isolator bushings provide the best uniform tensile properties and strength. At Vibra Screw we produced both with our own dies and molds. Smaller Activators use smaller forged hangers combined with a lower durometer isolator. Larger activators use larger forged hangers and progressively higher durometer isolators. The critical calculation is to design for each specific load situation with the right choice of forging size and isolator stiffness. The correct design will maximize strength while minimizing vibration transmission. It may sound simple but for Activators to operate within optimal parameters hangers are a critical component. When applications require even more load carrying ability, simply adding additional standard hangers is not always possible. Our R&D engineers have designed a cable hanger similar in design to the cables used on the world’s largest suspension bridges. The cable hanger provides excellent horizontal flexibility and vibration isolation, and up to 10 times the load capacity of our strongest regular hangers. Our experience has shown the hanger designs we’ve described here are far superior to those using ordinary bar stock, threaded rod or even castings for vertical support combined with rudimentary off-the-shelf isolators. Beyond the nuts and bolts of installing a Bin Activator, a carefully designed hanger system is essential. Vibra Screw’s 60 years of experience, from invention of the Bin Activator to development of its present design, ensures the safety and integrity of each system. |
If you’re a process engineer involved in handling dry solid materials, this blog is for you. Here at Vibra Screw, we have over 60 years experience in designing and manufacturing high quality equipment to store, discharge, meter, convey, size and blend. In that time, we’ve learned quite a lot about this business. We’ve learned the best way to move materials from storage to process and we’ve learned about all the other ways. Now we’ve created this blog to share some of what we’ve learned along with some interesting things that are happening here at Vibra Screw. We invite you to stop back frequently as we will be sharing useful and interesting information.
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