FSM Case History

Essex Rise Conveyors Corporation in West Caldwell NJ was asked to design and build a product transfer system for a major consumer products manufacturer in Humberside, England. The system was required to efficiently transport Kraton Polymer Pellets, received and stored in 1500 pound Gaylord storage containers, to an extrusion system at a rate of 3000 pounds per hour for the production of baby wipes. As designed, the System uses a Roller Conveyor and a "Gaylord Tipper" to move and invert the Gaylord Containers, emptying the Kraton Pellets into the pick-up hopper of a pneumatic conveying system which delivers the pellets to the extruders in another part of the plant.

However, a major system problem that needed to be overcome was that Kraton Pellets have a tendency to form large agglomerates, up to 6 inches in diameter. These "lumps" will clog the feed system and shut down the pneumatic conveyor. Shawn Bohanon of Essex Rise asked Atlantic Coast Crushers Inc. (ACC) to provide an easily installed Crusher that would break the pellet agglomerate lumps back down to their original size and allow the pneumatic conveying system to feed the Kraton Pellets to the extruders without any system upsets.

Following sample testing with the Kraton Pellets, ACC provided a Model FSM1212 Flow-Smasher Crusher/Lumpbreaker. The Flow-Smasher is a two shaft, low speed unit with a high capacity and very short face-to-face dimension. The machine was easily installed above the pick-up hopper and consistently breaks up and eliminates the Pellet agglomerates at the desired rate for efficient pneumatic material transfer.