Save My Grinder — Damage Alert System Provides More Piece of Mind by Bonnie L. Quick
An example of some metal that would not pass through the grinder's mill after the system has been installed.
It happens everyday at recycling centers all over the country. They are set up to process green waste. It’s time to clean up the yard. Somebody piles in grass and clippings from the yard into their truck. So far, so good. Then out of the corner of their eye they see the old starter, crankshaft or tire rim that needs to go and bang, it gets thrown in the truck. Over the top of the car part goes some more green waste and boom, off to the recycling yard. No one means any harm but it’s your wood grinder that gets stopped and your parts that get bent and broken because metal on metal is not so healthy for the machine. Work time is lost and money wasted while you are broken down for the day, which affects the bottom line. And there is no way you can sort through the pile to weed out scrap metal. “Metal in the middle of a pile of grass clippings and yard waste is like a needle in the haystack,” says Johanness Vanderwey, CEO of Apollo Equipment in Salem, OR. “Going through the piles to find it would not be cost effective.” But metal can harm or destroy equipment in an instant. Apollo Equipment is the exclusive authorized distributor of the Damage Alert System, the first U.S. patented vibration-activated alert system for wood grinders. The Damage Alert System senses unwanted metal objects and shuts down the grinder before they can cause severe damage. One or two sensors can control the necessary level of protection while the sensitivity can be adjusted to control the size of metal objects allowed through the grinder. Shutting down the machine saves on repair bills and prevents costly down time. “The Damage Alert System has been proven to work well on tub grinders as well as horizontal ones,” said Vanderwey. “Apollo is a family business and we are one of the largest sellers of used recycling equipment. We highly recommend the Damage Alert System for both new and used products. The system senses unwanted metal-to-metal contact before there is damage and in this market more and more hours are being spent grinding wood waste for mulch, compost and hog fuel.” The Damage Alert System is easy to install with a magnetic clamp. Apollo provides mounting hardware, cabling and the connectors necessary for normal installation. Once installed, the sensitivity level is fine-tuned to detect damaging debris of a prescribed size; the system is then set to the “ARM” mode for continuous operation and protection. In the “ARM” mode, any pulses that are intense enough to illuminate the red section of the bar graph display, however briefly, will trip a system relay. This instantly cuts power and disables the grinder or reverse the in-feed until the obstruction is removed and the system is reset. As an added value, when you purchase a Damage Alert System, anytime the system’s technology is updated, Apollo techs will go out to your site and install the new upgrade free of charge. The need to protect recycling equipment from unwanted damage has never been more important. ” A year ago,” said Vanderwey, ”most power plants were paying $7 - $15 a ton for wood to burn but now because of the upturn in oil prices, the same plants are paying $35 - $40 a ton. That is a seven-fold increase and it really points out the need to curb waste. People are going into the woods and recycling stuff they would have previously left. There is a real frenzy for hog fuel and any wood material that can be burned to create power to make energy for running steam turbines and selling electricity. Many companies are grinding everyday and burning less oil.” Recent Testimonials from Apollo customers: “I now have four of these installed, running on Peterson 6700’s and Peterson 7400’s since the beginning of January. I immediately saw results,” said Chuck Smith of CST Organic Recycling. “The system even detected a metal tip that came off and tried to go through the grinder, so it saved our grinder from it’s own parts damaging it. The system is so easy to operate ... there’s nothing to it.” “We run a 4700B Peterson horizontal grinder and we are grinding in a saw mill that has metal contaminants. The contaminants are 1/4-inch plate metal, angle iron, rebar, and miscellaneous metal objects,” said Robin Thibodeaux of Deep South Organics and Deep South Bark in Louisiana. “Our company noticed a big difference in damage control since we have installed the new damage alert system. Before we installed the damage control system we were working more on the grinder than we were grinding. It’s really a noticeable difference!” “We have two of these installed on our Morbark 5600 grinders and one on a Morbark 6600. We have used the system for over a month now,” said Mike Morgan from Guy Shavender Trucking. “We run anything from land clearing to wood yard debris that has a lot of metal mixed in with it ... The metal pieces normally would tear up inserts, hoods, screens, and hammers. It’s saving us a lot of money right now. This works so well that we plan on getting more systems to install on two of our other grinders.” Apollo Equipment is a family-owned and operated business selling used heavy equipment for wood waste recycling application. They feature a wide selection of used tub and horizontal grinders, along with other support equipment including trommel screens, wood chippers, forestry equipment, stump cutters, dump trucks, bark blowers, dozers, loaders, excavators and more. For additional information, contact Apollo Equipment at 1-800-982-2844 or 503-585-1442, or visit www.apolloequipment.net.
