The Sands of Time Never Stand Still

For the team at iBulk® even the most simple request can often lead to the development of interesting and innovative solutions that are designed to meet the exact requirements of a client’s specifications. A great example of this was when they were approached by a major mineral sand miner to screen titanium sand at 300µm.

“At face value that seemed a reasonable and run of the mill request that in most cases would be handled more than adequately by one of our standard screeners,” said Tony Webber, managing director, iBulk® Solutions. “But as we worked through the project specifications further with this particular client, it became more obvious that there were some unique requirements that we’d needed to consider to ensure their expectations were completely fulfilled.”

The research and development team at iBulk® had to contend with two major issues that separated this project from a standard screening install, dust extraction and space. Dust encapsulation was particularly important to reduce the chance of product contamination, while the iBulk® engineers also had to contend with a site where limited space was available in which to install the machines.

“These two individual, but equally important factors changed the ball game completely,” remarked Tony.”And combined they really set our design team with an interesting challenge.”

The solution was to start with Rotex 521 Gyratory Screener as the basis before making a large number of design modifications that would be incorporated into the build. The Rotex Screener is a highly efficient separator of dry bulk solids when presented with very fine particles.

“We redesigned the screen frames and the top cover of the machine so as to accommodate our client‘s requirements. At iBulk® we’re not just proprietary equipment providers, our design engineers are able to assess the customer’s needs and provide a suitable solution,” Tony explained.

To make matters even more complex, a key feature of the Rotex 521 Gyratory Screener is a unique ball cleaning system that is unsurpassed when working with products that have the tendency to blind screen surfaces.

“It was paramount to keep that feature intact no matter what other modifications needed to be made to the machine,” said Tony. “The ball cleaning systems sets this machine head-and-shoulders above the competition and our engineers didn’t baulk at the challenge, delivering a final design that maintained this feature by introducing new screen fixing methods to maintain a fully isolated system so as to ensure no contamination of the fines in the underflow could occur.

“When we measure screening efficiency we are determined that our machines offer efficiencies of greater than 95%,” Tony stated.  “This is what sets iBulk® apart from other types of screening machine equipment providers.”