Stone Aging Equipment
Rota Cage BV / RE Budel, Netherlands
Artificially aged concrete elements combine the
technical characteristics of a product, made with high-tech
equipment, with the charme and the aesthetical appearance of
building materials, which have been used since centuries. Today,
aged paving stones and other landscaping products are indispensable
categories of a complete offer for every advanced producer in
America.
For many years, Rotating Drums ("Tumblers")
have been the only available equipment for this process. The pavers
and blocks in such a drum touch each other or the
drum, when being turned, leading to irregular brake out of the stone
edges and surfaces. The resulting picture however comes very close
to the pretension, to be stones
which
have not been installed nowadays, but in medieval
times.
But also the disadvantages of this method are known: when leaving
the drum, the blocks have to be re-arranged, sorted and re-cubed, be
to ready for being stored and shipped. This whole process is either
labour intensive or requires the purchase of further equipment,
which however in most cases also does not work free of hazards
without continuous manual interventions.
Especially in plants with big board machines so called
"Stone
Aging Machines"
have become popular over the recent years, which are either directly
or via by-passes integrated into the dry lines. This is the reason,
such Aging Machines are very often classified as “In Line” machines.
One major advantage of this method is, that the
treated blocks keep also during the aging process there original
arrangement in the layer, just as they leave the mold, and after
the treatment can be cubed and packaged with the existing equipment
of the regular lines. The eventually higher investment costs for this
method in comparison with a conventional drum tumbler are paying
back over the usage time by lower labour costs and reduced rejects
from broken blocks.
But also this method has disadvantages: one is, that blocks, which
are treated on this way, do not look as
old and used as the drum tumbled blocks. A second disadvantage is,
that this method forces the user, to treat the blocks immediately
after they leave the curing racks. This can be too early for certain
products, resulting in undesired results,
or the storage area needs to be extended, to allow a longer curing.
What would you say, if somebody could offer a system to you,
combining the advantages and even more of both methods? Will say,
granting the same appearance and picture, like the conventional drum
tumbling, but under adoption of the advantages of an inline process:
lower costs of operations, conservation of the layer pattern, just
as it is coming from the mould, much less rejects, satisfying
results also with thin products, even with hard faced
products, to
mention a selection of advantages only.
This is not possible?
Once upon a time ...
Or: not all stories, which begin like that, are
a fairy-tale.
When one of our advanced European Customers, Windmolders
in Belgium (www.winstones.be),
started in 2006 with the first test runs with a machine, we had
never seen before, and named this machine a "Tumbling Machine", we
were close to consider this as a "fairy-tale".
The name of this machine was ROTACAGE, and Windmolders explained the
easy working principle with this name: the products are placed in a
cage, and this rotates ...
Processing of the entire paver cube in one working cycle, not de-stacking,
no sorting, no re-stacking, almost no waste, manual labor reduced to
bringing the cube to the machine and taking off the finished cube by
forklift, no height restrictions, ... doesn't this sound like a
fairy-tale?
No, this is no more a fairy-tale. This is a method, which does keep
everything, what is promised. It is an award winning process, and we
as Zenith are proud, that the first application for this machine
started in one of our customers factories.
And as we are very sure, that this is the future of the efficient
stone aging all around the world, we are proud, that we can offer
this not only to our customers, but also to the entire paver and
landscaping industry in America.
We as Zenith Equipment Inc. offer various solutions, based on the
ROTACAGE Equipment:
As a stand-alone unit, integrated in packaging lines, or integrated
in complete plants of all brands, not only Zenith plants.
For more information contact:
Norma Mondragon
E-Mail:
nmondragon@zenithequipment.com
Horst-Walter Eckhardt
E-Mail: hwe@zenith.de