A problem with vibrating screen conveyors is that their otherwise efficient action can disrupt adjacent workplaces and equipment.
These ubiquitous industrial workhorses create controlled shockwaves, or vibration, to transport or sift material in applications such as food and primary product ingredients, dry chemicals, minerals and building mixes.
One drawback of this vibration is that it can contribute to industrial noise, vibration and harshness, NVH, which collectively represent one of the persistent enemies of occupational health and safety programmes.
Unions and acoustic engineers concerned about the issue say current methods of hearing protection, such as ear muffs and plugs, can in some instances be about as effective as filters on cigarettes. Lasting solutions need to go deeper.
And at the same time NVH is disrupting employee comfort and safety, this insidious problem is also trying to disturb the daily function of instruments and computerised automation and productions systems.
Air Springs Supply responds to the need for simple, reliable and highly efficient ways to tackle NVH, which is expanding its broad range of inflatable isolators called Airmounts.
In essence, Airmounts are highly engineered balloons - balloons that are carefully constructed to deliver a range of high isolation efficiencies across a broad spectrum of needs.
These needs can extend from suspension of a 30kg computerised control panel, for example, to total suspension of the entire tonnage of common industrial plant such as motors, crushers, presses and vibrating screen conveyors.
Airmount isolators – available in single, double and triple-convoluted types as well as rolling sleeve models – typically achieve isolation efficiencies of more than 99%, says Air Springs Supply National Sales Manager Simon Agar.
“What is attractive about Airmount vibration solutions is their extreme performance and reliability across a wide weight range. They’re so efficient as to be used beneath operating tables in surgeries, electron microscopes and beneath the most delicate of production automation equipment. Yet they are robust enough to give decades of service suspending an entire production unit, such as a vibrating screen conveyor,” says Agar, whose company has more than 30 years experience in engineering isolation installations.
Airmounts come in sizes that individually support weights ranging from a few dozen kilograms up to more than 40,000kg.
Models range from palm-sized to nearly a metre across. In addition to good vibration isolation, Airmounts are corrosion resistant, live longer and are quieter than conventional coil springs.
Pneumatic inflation of Airmount isolators mean they eliminate the compression set often found in steel and solid rubber springs. Elimination of this unwanted compression under weight enhances consistency of performance and reduces the need for replacement.
Airmount isolators also contain no internal moving parts to wear, or metal springs to corrode or break.
“No single isolator cures all industrial vibration problems, but it is often easy to overlook Airmounts because they are so simple and cost-effective. Often for applications such as vibrating screen conveyors they are ideal,” says Agar.