January/February 1998
In the past nine years, this Ohio manufacturer has been shaking things up in the shredding industry, winning fans for its vibratory feeders, pollution control systems, and more.
By Eileen Zagone
Eileen Zagone is an associate editor of Scrap.
Lee Josephs likes to shake things up. In fact, so does everyone at Bulk Equipment Systems Technology Inc. (B.E.S.T.), the company Josephs owns along with his two sons-in-law and his two daughters.
Why are they all movers and shakers? Because B.E.S.T.’s focus is designing and manufacturing vibratory bulk handling equipment for industries ranging from snack food to chemicals—and, of course, scrap recycling.
And just what is vibratory equipment? Well, you know that vibrating feeder underneath the mill of an automobile shredder, the one that catches everything coming through the shredder’s grates? How about eddy-current feeders, vibratory sorting tables, and drum feeders? Add air-piston vibrators, screeners, and bulk bag loaders and unloaders to the list and you get the right idea—vibratory equipment runs the gamut from fairly small, widely used pieces of equipment to mammoth components for specialized applications such as scrap shredding and recycling.
And B.E.S.T.—based just outside Cleveland in Brunswick, Ohio—has made it its mission to become a leader in this specialized equipment niche.
A Built-In Insurance Policy
Currently, vibratory equipment for the scrap industry accounts for approximately 25 to 30 percent of B.E.S.T.’s production and, not surprisingly, a significant portion of its large-scale pieces. Though the firm’s foray into the vibratory equipment side of the shredding market has been fairly recent—about nine years—its products have gained quite a few fans.
One of them is shredder manufacturer Texas Shredder Inc. (San Antonio), which gives B.E.S.T. perhaps the ultimate endorsement: sales representation. Through Texas Shredder as well as the efforts of Dick Breudigam, B.E.S.T.’s sales manager, the company is happy to report that there are currently hundreds of its undermill vibratory feeders and other equipment at work in auto shredders around the globe.
These units, explain Breudigam and Tim Conway, vice president of engineering, aren’t run-of-the-mill undermill vibratory feeders. “We use a different design than anyone else,” says Conway. As Breudigam explains, B.E.S.T.’s undermill feeders are based on a simplified design that eliminates the moving parts that can cause problems in other feeders. The firm views its simplified design “as an insurance policy for downtime,” he says.
Ah, you say, shredder downtime, the bane of shredder operators everywhere and the cause of countless hours of lost productivity. So, given the many potential mechanical problems that can cause a shredder to take an unwanted time-out, any component that offers an “insurance policy” is more than a comforting thought—it’s an invaluable asset. That’s especially true when you’re talking about a shredder’s undermill vibratory feeder. In short, when a shredder’s undermill feeder is broken, so is the shredder until the unit is fixed.
What makes the B.E.S.T. undermill feeder different from the rest—and the key to its “insurance policy”—is its simplified design. Other undermill systems use what Breudigam calls “choo-choo train systems”—crank-arm shakers that have a lot of moving parts such as shafts, bearings, pivot arms, springs, belts, levers, and more that support the weight of the conveyor. This type of feeder, he notes, has to be bolted down to a heavy, thick concrete pad because the motion required to convey the shredded material can shake the feeder right off its base. With all of those moving parts, the chance of something going wrong—and, hence, the risk of shredder downtime—is higher, says Conway.
The B.E.S.T. undermill feeder, on the other hand, is essentially two motor vibrators on the back of a conveying pan that sits on springs. “All you have to be concerned about is those two motors and a couple of springs instead of a bunch of moving parts,” Conway says. This simplicity helps ease maintenance—the motors, for instance, have to be greased only twice a year—as well as troubleshooting in that any problems with the feeder are easy to diagnose because malfunctions are either related to the motors or the springs, he notes. This is great news for shredder operators. As Breudigam says, “there’s already a lot of maintenance associated with shredders, so this is one less thing to worry about.”
B.E.S.T.’s undermill feeders also outshine choo-choo train systems when it comes to handling shredder explosions, asserts Josephs. B.E.S.T. feeders, for example, feature “explosion stops” that allow the feeder pan to go down only about an inch before it bottoms out. This design prevents the springs from being compressed to the point where they gain significant energy to recoil and send the feeder pan flying.
One time, Conway recalls, a shredder operator called to tell him about the biggest explosion his operation had ever experienced. When Conway asked how B.E.S.T.’s feeder fared in the blast, the customer reported that all they had to do was reposition the pan atop the springs and resume shaking and shredding.
Other feeders, B.E.S.T.’s executives say, provide no such protections. In fact, when an explosion racks a crank-style shaker, they maintain, the result is usually broken arms, springs, and other mechanical parts. When this happens, it could be days or weeks before the undermill—and, therefore, the shredder—is up and running again, Breudigam says.
Making a Good Thing Bigger
While B.E.S.T. claims to be the leading U.S. manufacturer of twin-motor vibratory feeders for the auto shredding industry, Josephs and his staff quickly note that they didn’t invent the concept. The design has been around since at least the 1960s, Breudigam says.
Since then, twin-motor vibratory feeders have become widely used in many industries, and there are several manufacturers competing with B.E.S.T. for these smaller-scale applications.
Where B.E.S.T. does take credit, however, is in sizing up this technology to meet the large-scale demands of the scrap shredding industry. And the firm has this niche virtually to itself, according to its executives.
Why haven’t other vibratory equipment makers sized up their machinery, too, and promoted the twin-motor design?
Part of the reason can be traced to the energy crisis of the 1970s, which emphasized low horsepower above all else, Breudigam explains. Feeder manufacturers were discouraged from coming up with designs that would increase horsepower—and, hence, energy consumption—so the traditional design using a relatively small motor stayed de rigueur.
Today, of course, the energy crisis is history and the focus for manufacturers is no longer on minimizing energy consumption, though that is certainly still an issue, Breudigam notes. Instead, the priorities are on a machine’s durability, efficiency, and ease of maintenance and repair, he says, adding that the twin-motor design is perfectly suited to this philosophical shift since downtime is eliminated and maintenance is minimal.
That’s only part of the reason why there aren’t more competitors in the large-scale vibratory feeder niche. Another reason is that, while feeder makers may have the technical ability to size up their equipment for use in shredders, they don’t have entree into the shredding market and thus lack the marketing clout to compete in this field, say B.E.S.T.’s principals. Their firm’s alliance with Texas Shredder—the credibility of being linked to one of the leading shredder manufacturers—is precisely what enabled B.E.S.T. to get its foot in the door of the shredding industry, they note.
In addition, over the years, B.E.S.T. has benefited from good old-fashioned word-of-mouth promotion. The shredding community is a close-knit one and operators talk, so once B.E.S.T. got a few feeders operating in the industry, word spread about their performance and advantages.
B.E.S.T. and Beyond
While B.E.S.T. has become well-known in shredding circles for its undermill vibratory feeders, the firm’s equipment offerings for the scrap recycling industry go far beyond that, encompassing all manner of sorting tables, screeners, feeders, and conveyors.
Closely related to shredders, of course, are separation systems, including eddy-current nonferrous separators and metering drum feeders. The key to successful separation in any system, Conway notes, is taking a bulky and inconsistent load of mate-rial and producing a consistent and evenly distributed flow to the eddy-current separator, magnet, or human sorters.
In this equipment area, Josephs says, B.E.S.T.’s emphasis has been similar to its successful strategy with its undermill feeders: simplify. This approach seems to have paid off. Of all the eddy-current systems in operation, “there’s a pretty good chance its feeder was made by us,” Josephs states.
Josephs, however, didn’t start out in the vibratory equipment business. Since 1957, though, he has engineered and provided bulk material handling and pollution control equipment and systems. In 1972, after working as an engineer in the metals industry, he founded an environmental consulting firm named Process Equipment Design Consultants Inc., or PEDCON, and shortly thereafter became intimately acquainted with auto shredding.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, PEDCON branched out and began designing and installing pollution control equipment on recycling systems and auto shredders and, in the process, became familiar with Texas Shredder and its vice president, Jim Schwartz. “When we developed our pollution control system, there were no defined EPA standards for the auto shredding industry,” Josephs recalls. “We assisted in setting the standards.” In fact, he says, after he engineered PEDCON’s system for shredders, it was effective enough to meet the U.S. EPA’s subsequent stringent requirements, including current Title V regulatory criteria.
Though the system is proprietary, it operates basically as follows: At the discharge point of a shredder’s undermill, the system vacuums up light particles, oil, smoke, and residues that would create a dark particulate cloud if released into the atmosphere. “The system works just like a vacuum,” says Josephs, “but obviously with a larger fan and motor system.”
The material continues on to a so-called venturi high-efficiency scrubber system, which washes and encapsulates the sub-micron smoke and particulates and prevents them from flying around and escaping into the atmosphere. The encapsulated particles are washed down into a recirculating tank where sediment settles to the bottom for removal and proper disposal, while the cleaner water is reused in the system.
PEDCON’s oil/smoke mist opacity eliminator separator—what Josephs calls the key to the system’s success and which explains why it’s closely guarded technology—is the next step. Here, particularly fine sub-micron smoke particles are finally removed, completing the process.
The company also designs baghouse systems for a variety of industrial applications. Working much like household “dustbusters” but on a much larger scale, the systems vacuum dust-containing air through specially designed filter bags. The dust is attracted to the outside of the bags, where it clings until the bags are at rest. At this point, the use of reverse pulse air causes the particles to fall to the collection hopper for removal. According to Josephs, the company’s filter baghouse design extends the life of the filters.
Josephs founded B.E.S.T. in 1975 as a consulting firm in the bulk material handling industry. Through his work in this sector, he became familiar with the vibratory equipment industry and met Breudigam, who was working for a manufacturer of vibratory equipment.
In 1986, Breudigam suggested creating a vibratory equipment division of B.E.S.T., with one goal being to size up the equipment and tap the scrap recycling market. Josephs concurred. He then recruited sons-in-law Conway and Ed Verbos, both engineers, to help launch the venture and “develop our heavy equipment dream into a reality,” he explains.
Currently, B.E.S.T.’s heavy-duty equipment is designed by in-house engineers and, not surprisingly, almost all of the equipment B.E.S.T. and PEDCON design is customized in some way, especially the large equipment. Nearly all of the firm’s equipment is manufactured by trusted fabricators in the Cleveland area—one of which is kept busy almost exclusively making B.E.S.T. equipment. In fact, says Conway, while not technically employees of B.E.S.T., some of the fabricators know the equipment about as well as the engineers who designed it because they’ve worked in partnership for so long.
It seems they like to shake things up, too.
Turning Wastes Into Fuel
Look closely at the nuggets at right. Know what they are? They’re waste that’s been converted into fuel pellets through a process developed by Lee Josephs’ PEDCON consulting firm.
The process can convert wastes such as shredder fluff and municipal solid waste into fuel pellets. Once recyclables are removed from the incoming material, the remaining waste undergoes a 10-minute process that eliminates odor and kills bacteria to produce pellets that are more compact than traditional refuse-derived fuel and that can be burned to produce electricity. If desired, the material can be combined with other materials in order to elevate the fuel’s average Btus per pound, like the black pellets at the bottom that have been combined with coal.
The fuel pellets are also virtually nonpolluting, Josephs asserts, claiming that the U.S. Department of Energy has determined that this fuel burns 28 times cleaner than typical combustibles. Currently, however, only a handful of systems have employed PEDCON’s waste-to-energy process. That’s because the process has faced persistant stumbling blocks such as political issues and the NIMBY—not-in-my-backyard—syndrome, Josephs notes.
But the public’s tide could turn as landfills reach capacity and become more pricey. Plus, shredder operators might boost interest in the process since it gives them an alternative to disposing of their shredder fluff. •
In the past nine years, this Ohio manufacturer has been shaking things up in the shredding industry, winning fans for its vibratory feeders, pollution control systems, and more.