Ever wonder how they get those wonderful little pieces of goodies inside of ice cream. You know those chunks of toffee, dark chocolate flakes, butterscotch pieces or coconut are fed into the ice cream making process by Vibra Screw’s AccuFeed screw feeder, at many well know ice cream makers. They chose the AccuFeed because of it’s ability to accurately meter many different types of ingredients and it is very easy to clean when product changes are made.
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For decades Vibra Screw has supplied material handling equipment to the aerospace industry for the space shuttle booster engine and military rockets. Once again we had the opportunity to develop a high accuracy batching system to handle extremely explosive oxidizer powder used as one of the ingredients in making solid rocket fuel. System is comprised of a portable Vibra Screw 200 ft3 Live Bottom Bin and Vibratory Feeder Loss-In-Weight batch system.
Silica, otherwise known as industrial sand, provides the most important ingredient for glass production. Silica sand provides the essential Silicon Dioxide (SiO2) required for glass formulation, which makes silica the primary component in all types of standard and specialty glass.
If you have ever used an hourglass, you know dry sand will flow like water. Add moisture to sand, like moist beach sand, put it in a pail, turn it over and the sand takes the form of the pail. The sand compresses and adheres to itself becoming non-free flowing. The same thing happens on a larger scale where wet sand is stored in large silos for glass making. Not only does the silo need to hold the sand but the sand needs to flow out of the silo in a controlled rate to match the glass production rate.
To overcome the non-free flowing nature of wet sand Vibra Screw has been providing Bin Activators for over 60 years to some of the largest glass producers in the world. Bin Activator using controlled vibration assures continuous uninterrupted flow of material. The attached photo is a 10 ft Bin Activator getting ready to be shipped to an architectural glass plant.
Lime is a manufactured product made from limestone (calcium carbonate) or dolomite
(magnesium carbonate). The raw material is processed into quicklime and hydrated lime. Since it is alkaline, it is used to adjust the pH of both drinking water and wastewater.
Getting ready to ship a small water treatment lime handling system. The storage bin is a Vibra Screw 22 ft3 capacity Live Bin and the feeder is a Vibra Screw Versi Feeder with 1.5″ screw accurately feeding lime at 500 lbs/hr max.
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 68 years of experience, from invention of the Bin Activator to development of its present design, ensures the safety and integrity of each system.
Vibra Screw Inc has developed a new Bin Activator hanger that provides up to ten times the dynamic load bearing capacity of all previous designs. It prevents nearly all overload issues that can arise in high volume bins with dense or fluidized  material, or where pneumatic filling creates higher than normal bin pressures. Costly repairs and production downtime are eliminated.
High bin loads can cause rubber isolator bushings in standard hangers to over compress leading to additional vibration transmission to the bin structure and sagging that can create leakage of material from the Activator main seal. The new cable hanger eliminates the rubber isolator while maintaining nearly
Alexco Environmental offered an onsite solution including a 75-ton silo and feed system to feed hydrated lime to treat 200 to 800 gallons per minute of influent. Alexco contacted Vibra Screw Inc. of Totowa, New Jersey, for expertise on equipment for handling bulk powders to see what was needed and what could be shipped within a week. The company offered a volumetric screw feeder with variable speed drive and a controller with 4-20 mA remote speed input, which would allow the lime feed to automatically adjust to the changing pH of the influent. The higher the acidity, the more lime was continuously fed. The system would also treat the heavy metals
The system was up and running within weeks. It operates around the clock, even through the tough Colorado winter.
If you have a short term project, feasibility study or need a feeder while we’re custom building one for you, we’ll lend you one of ours free of charge. Your only obligation is for round trip freight.
Keep the feeder for up to 60 days. If you need it longer, there’s a reasonable rental program available.
Ordering a new feeder from us? Keep the loaner until we build the new one – no charge.
Whatever your bulk solids handling needs, call us for a solution. Solving customers’ problems is what we do best.
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Vibra Screw manufactures high quality equipment to store, discharge, meter, convey, size and blend bulk materials. All equipment comes with a money back guarantee to perform in the service for which it was sold.
For more information please visit www.vibrascrew.com.