Please sell lots of these so I can replace all the worn out belts!

REDDOG ■

That's a HUGE if!

I don't mean to offend but it is rare to have desktop conditions in the real world.

The hedgehog type brushes wear very quickly and soon become ornamental.

End users typically do not invest much time in tweaking belt cleaners. If it doesn't work they remove it and call the competition. I would really like to witness this whirling belt cleaner in action. Perhaps some jpegs/mpegs online.

Regards,

REDDOG ■

Mr. Plaut:

I agree with the REMA IP-TOP brush concept. Many build such brushes. The brush has a number of the significant advantages:

1. It allows for differential wear across the cleaner face that a blade can not. Many a belt has abrasive materrial that may, according the loading station, differentially apply the abrasive material across the belt that will cause a higher rate of wear on the cleaner device in the more abrasive zone. A blade cannot accomodate differing abrasive zones. It will have different surface speeds which exacerabate local wear on the blade. The brush does not have this problem because it is significantly less sensitive to radial wear in that it can deflect or bend strand by strand.

2. The brush is inheritly self cleaning. Centrifugal force and brush strand deflection causes contaminants to fly off the brush tip surface using velocity.

3. Some brushes use a motor powered feature to give the brush tip an aid in kinetic energy cleaning = M * V *V /2. The brush tip high speed needs a smaller contact pressure and less brush strand defection. The manufacturers still have not got it right.

Having said the above, the brush can still have an unacceptable high rate of wear and need continuous maintenance adjustment to stay effective.

Maybe new materials will solve this weakness. Some forum member may step up and tell us so.

I would have to see the evidence, like a reasonable list of installation references, to buy nto the idea a rotating blade can best a brush or be effective for any acceptable period of time. So let us see the reference list of products, time in service, reputable clients.....

Lawrence Nordell

Conveyor Dynamics, Inc. ■

how it is working with dust environement? I have already put brushes and it plugs and put fire. would i have the same problems with your system? ■

Have you considered using a rotating disc plow for this application? The principle is similar to a tilling disc used by farmers.

Mounted to the underside of the conveyor, the sticky materials are dislodged by a series of discs in a diagonal alignment which are scraping as they rotate. Take care to balance induced side travel forces. ■

A roll with an arrangement of helical grooves or blades works in the same principal as a mill cutter on a solid material and it is not difficult or expensive to design them "self adjustable".

A simple way is to use pneumatic pressure to regulate the blade contact with the belt using the same design principles as a core chuck.

The main difficulties with these devices is that they needs to be customized to the specific operation and require the belt to be in tension in the cleaning area.

With respect to maintenance, all equipment requires maintenance and we could speak in terms of reliability or maintainability in relation to what benefits the system adds to the process.

I can't judge the efficiency of the system proposed here but I have seen rotary belt cleaning systems that work well for those specific operations and have decent reliability.

Antonio Reis

www.vitrom.com ■

We would like to get details of this facility, can you please send some details.

Thanks

Sushanta ■

Mr. Rivkin:

Please post your ingeneous device on the form site here for all to view. Many rotating blade and brush cleaners have been tried. None do a good job or they would take over the industry.

We eagerly await your posting.

Lawrence Nordell ■

Dear Dr. Rivkin,

As Mr. Nordell has suggested, the use of rotary rubber blade and rubber brush cleaners have not proven to be successful in the industry. Although they tend to be very efficient initially, as the rubber wears contact with the belt is lost. Unless the operator has an efficient maintenance team the units do not get adjusted and carryover results.

Do the blade arms in your unit have sufficient length to provide for tip wear without having to replace blades monthly or weekly, or does the assembly come with an adjustment which permits operators to move the unit closer to the discharge pulley as blade wear occurs? If the latter, do you handle changes in the chain tension with a dancer sprocket?

Regards, ■

All the usual problems with belt cleaning are highlighted with every new mechanical cleaning attempt. Here; by smacking the belt periodically there will be a high frequency pulse introduced along the return strand and this will have to be considered when designing and locating a vertical take up station.

Generally speaking the multi-blade scrapers afford better wear adjustment/compensation techniques. In this machine it appears that the full width steel edge strip might flex in sympathy with the belt cross section profile but that is not specifically stated. In any event the contact pressure will be unfavourably distributed regardless of the onset of wear. I have never fancied beating the daylights out of a belt to clean it. If the belt is difficult to clean mechanically then washing should be considered. More material would be recovered and belt life would be prolonged.

It is a sad fact of conveyor life that if you scrape material off a belt then wear points are added to the belt or scraper. Something has to give. It is not a valid engineering statement to say that because the blades are hard enough then the plant engineer can sleep well. If the blades are not wearing then the belt is. On some plants the main spine belt is the single most expensive item on the site. ■

John,

I agree that some component in the system has to wear and to some extent be the expendable part of the system. From an economical stand, one should select those as to optimize the cost of ownership.

I don't understand the system proposed in this thread but I don't think that the blades smack the belt. Again I may be wrong...

With respect to belt washers, in my opinion, they are very effective but with a high cost to operate and maintain.

Often pressure alone is not enough to remove the material from the belt, the belt needs to be washed from both sides to provent caking on the drive side and in most cases you need to remove the excess water. If not you have the same mess as with the mechanical cleaner but in this instance a wet mess.

To support the operation you need a pumping system and a water/sludge recovery system. Than you have to deal with the sludge.

Replacing the belt every five years is not good practice but replacing 10 blades per month at a cost of $1K may not be such a bad idea.

Antonio Reis

www.vitrom.com ■

Dr. Rivkin:

It is late and the mind wonders a pondering.

I smell something fishy. Is it a big fish?

All the dialog on this (sic) fish (cleaner) yet we can't see a posting on Moby Dick. Give us all a view of your view Dr. Rivkin.

Post it, Dr. Rivkin, to satiate the appetite of the fishermen. We ask what it is and what is it. Why cant we see it? Does it really exist?

I say it doesn't exit till it exists. Make it exit Dr. Rivkin.

Scrapers and rotators, wear and tear, with flailing blades - its enough to make you vibrate.

It is a secret weapon only to be exposed to those who don't.

Make me eat the fish! ■

Dear Michael,

I requested the drawings, per your instructions, on about the 10-11 of January. Now a month has pasted and no correspondence from your company. What is the problem? The fish is still ????

LK Nordell ■