Shh--shh-shhaker feeder...

[Steelforbrains]

We recently installed a shaker feeder on a 48' dropdeck trailer for a customer of ours. This was done so that they can take the conveyor on the road and demonstrate the capabilities of their system. It was a decent idea in theory but not so great in practice. The motors on the conveyor have speed controls that adjust the power from 0 Hz to 50 Hz. At certain frequencies you would think that the trailer is going to fall to shambles. Now they want us to come up with a solution to the problem. Does anyone have any ideas on how to dampen the vibration of the trailer without compromising the effectiveness of the conveyor. We can adjust the counterweights but I think that it has more to do with the frequecy, than the amplitude, which we are kind of limited to. The frame of the conveyor is now rigidly attached to the frame of the trailer. We might try some damping mounts but we can't afford to lose any performance from the convyors. Any ideas?

 

[rmw]

The jacks don't necessarily have to be fancy and costly hydraulics. You can use standard trailer landing gear, (the part that supports the trailer nose when it is not attached to a tractor) mounted at strategic points (determined by where you want to transmit the load to the ground).

The plates and/or brackets to attach these to the frame may already exist from the trailer manufacturer, and if successful, when the landing gear is no longer needed, the brackets and landing gear sets can be removed from the trailer frame so that it can be returned to normal service.

Since it is a drop deck, you might run into dimensional problems, because landing gear is normally sized for frame heights normally associated with fifth wheel heights, not drop deck heights, but, there are single landing gear towers that are built for smaller (less capacity) trailers that have much lower frame heights than tractor/trailer equipment. Individual (rather than paired) landing gear points along the trailer length may offer advantages as well, as I can't imagine these locations where it is being used as being real even surfaces.

rmw

 

[aggman]

Good point rmw. We have used the manual jacks also on our equipment and they work fine with lighter loads, as this obviously is.