Machinex Industries Inc., Plessisville, Quebec, has announced that Matt Risko has been appointed as the company’s Canadian sales manager. He has worked as a sales representative at Machinex Recycling Services (MRS), a service division of Machinex, in Pickering, Ontario, since 2009.
In his new role with Machinex, Risko will help to develop sorting system solutions for material recovery facilities (MRFs), Machinex says. He will cover the Canadian territory, except for the province of Quebec, which is supported by the internal sales team at Machinex headquarters.
When Risko joined MRS in 2009, he sold baling wire before moving up to sell balers and peripheral equipment, such as conveyors, optical sorters and compactors. He also worked on notable projects, such as a source-separated organics facility for the city of Toronto in 2011, a MRF upgrade with a polyethylene terephthalate (PET) optical sorter for Northumberland County in 2015 and a PET optical sorter project for the city of Hamilton, Ontario, in 2016, the company says.
“I feel like I have got the call to the big leagues,” Risko says. “I am very excited for the opportunity and look forward to continuing to grow with Machinex.”
Machinex develops sorting, waste management and recycling technology. The company’s experts have designed and installed more than 350 turnkey facilities in partnership with leading MRFs in Canada, the United States, Europe and Australia.
Arconic appoints new CEO
Blankenship
Arconic Inc., headquartered in Norcross, Georgia, has announced that its board of directors has appointed Charles “Chip” Blankenship as chief executive officer and a member of the Arconic board, effective Jan. 15, 2018. He is a 24-year veteran of General Electric (GE) who spent much of his career in its aviation and jet engine businesses, including running its commercial engine operations, Arconic says.
Blankenship brings 20 years of aerospace experience to Arconic, having worked across GE’s aviation businesses, including aero engines, industrial gas turbines and aerospace alloy development. He previously led GE Aviation’s Commercial Engines Operation, the world’s leading producer of large and small jet engines used in commercial aircraft.
A metallurgist by training, Blankenship began his career with GE in 1992 after earning a Bachelor of Science in materials engineering from Virginia Tech and a doctorate in materials science and engineering from the University of Virginia. Blankenship’s GE career culminated in his appointment as president and CEO of GE Appliances in December 2011, where he led a significant turnaround of the business and its subsequent 2016 sale to Haier Co., Arconic says.
Blankenship is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and serves on the board of the National Association of Manufacturing (NAM), where he also has led NAM’s Task Force on Competitiveness & the Workforce. He holds seven patents related to jet engine technology.
Blankenship says, “Arconic is a company with significant strengths and tremendous potential. I am eager to engage with customers, employees and the board to develop plans that capitalize on our strengths and deliver outstanding returns for our shareholders. I am excited to join the team and get started.”
Patricia F. Russo, interim chair of the Arconic board at the time of Blankenship’s hiring in the fall of 2017, says, “We are confident that Chip will lead Arconic to create sustainable and increasing value for customers and for shareholders.”
David Hess, who had served as Arconic’s interim CEO since April 2017, continues to serve on the company’s board.
John Plant, an Arconic director since 2016, was appointed chair of the board in late October of 2017. He succeeds Russo, who stepped into the role on an interim basis in April 2017. She continues her service on the company’s board of directors and as chair the Governance Committee.
Maren adds industry veteran to sales team
Williams
South Holland, Illinois-based Maren Engineering Inc. has announced Roger Williams has joined the company as its new western regional sales manager.
Williams is a 27-year veteran of the recycling equipment industry, having previously worked for Georgetown, South Carolina-based Coastal Wire and Bellevue, Ohio-based American Baler Co.
At Coastal Wire, Williams was Midwest regional sales manager. He worked in positions of increasing responsibility at American Baler, including as West Coast regional sales manager and as vice president of sales.
“Roger Williams is an exciting addition to our team,” says Todd Wondrow, president of Maren Engineering. “His technical knowledge of balers and systems couldn’t fit better with the ProPAK series of equipment Maren continues to develop. And no less important, Roger’s customer focus and reputation for integrity parallel what we at Maren promise to our customers.”
Maren Engineering has been building high-quality balers since 1962. More than five decades of experience has taught the company about industry demands. Applying the latest manufacturing practices and engineering has helped Maren meet those demands head on!
“We’re observant. We know what works and what does not,” says Todd Wondrow, Maren’s president. Being alert and responsive has led Maren to re-engineer itself along the way. “When I bought into the company I did it with an eye to the future,” Wondrow says.
Maren Engineering has a well-earned reputation for building high-quality, long-lasting machinery. “We’ve built on that legacy by expanding the product line and integrating new technologies and proven manufacturing methods,” Wondrow remarks.
Built to Last
For decades, Maren has produced balers for a wide range of commercial and industrial applications. Today the product line includes two-ram, auto-tie and closed-door manual-tie balers, plus conveyors and shredders used to condition material prior to baling.
Smartbale contamination free changeover
“We began building two-ram balers in response to customer demands,” says Mike Blais, Maren Regional Sales Manager. “Our contacts in the industry were looking for machines built to hold up against the toughest requirements and deliver maximum throughput. That’s what we’re building.”
Maren balers are fabricated using interlocking construction, which allows any one part of the machine’s frame to benefit from the strength of the rest of it. “It’s all linked together,” says Wondrow.
“Our large bore A-Series and Two Ram cylinders do not mount with pins in shear, or bolts in tension” explains Wondrow. “Main cylinders are interlocked to the baler’s frame. This creates a steel-on-steel connection that will virtually last forever.”
To ensure each machine ships ready for production, Maren pre-tests key components and does full system testing on each baler. “We also use finite element analysis in our CAD/CAM design phase to engineer out stress points that create undo fatigue,” says Wondrow.
Tested and Ready for the Long Haul
To design a superior automated operating system, Maren invested hundreds of hours working in the plants of customers. By running the machines in production environments, and analyzing customers actions, the team developed Maren’s proprietary Smart Bale system.
ProPak 2-Ram shipping to a customer
Smart Bale provides an easy-to-use menu to select pre-programmed recipes designed for each commodity processed. The system also has monitoring tools that allow for simple and contamination-free material changeovers.
The Smart Bale Mobile Interface allows a mobile equipment operator to also be the baler operator. It’s simple, intuitive and works from a tablet mounted directly on a piece of mobile equipment.
“We laugh that most manufacturers argue that they can’t afford to do the things we do. We just feel that we can’t afford not to do them,” says Wondrow.
If you’re considering an upgrade in your baler, be sure to talk with the Maren team.
Working with Machinex on equipment upgrades has allowed Ontario’s Bluewater Recycling Association to yield higher-value fiber grades at its material recovery facility.
Huron Park, Ontario-based Bluewater Recycling Association (BRA) prides itself on the services it provides and the products it produces. BRA is one of the largest multimunicipal resource management organizations in Canada, processing some 20,000 metric tons of recyclables annually from the 20 municipalities it serves.
About eight years ago, it invested in a single-stream processing system from Machinex, Plessisville, Quebec. At that time, Francis Veilleux, BRA president, said the design was well-thought-out to emphasize quality over quantity. It was a departure from many material recovery facility (MRF) designs that were geared more toward “handling large quantities of material with little regard to the quality of the end product or the amount of residue generation,” he said.
Machinex’s dedication to the project and willingness to develop a solution that fit Bluewater’s needs all those years ago left a lasting impression on Veilleux.
Quality assurance
BRA’s dedication to quality has not waivered all these years later. In 2017, the company decided to see whether it could improve the quality of its recyclables even further.
“We have minimized the production of mixed paper, and we have increased the production of quality ONP and OCC that meets and exceeds the new China requirements.” – Francis Veilleux
“We carried out a performance assessment of BRA’s MRF and identified areas that could benefit from improvements,” Veilleux explains.
The primary objective of the project was to evaluate the performance of the sorting equipment and manual stations and evaluate the maintenance and condition of the sorting line at the single-stream MRF. From those performance evaluations, recommendations could be made that would result in increased recovery of materials and potentially increased revenues, he adds.
From the audit, some key findings confirmed Veilleux’s suspicions that upgrades to some existing screens could help reduce contamination percentages and allow more of the higher-value fiber grades to be recovered, including the old corrugated containers (OCC) and the old newspapers (ONP) that were ending up in the mixed fiber bunker. The company also determined it could improve recovery rates for office paper that was ending up in the residue stream.
In addition, BRA wanted to prevent residues from getting into the mixed paper bunker, because it could potentially devalue or jeopardize the marketability of that material.
Armed with the information, BRA was ready to find solutions. “Our suspicions were proved and, as a result, the BRA ventured to find alternative technologies to remedy the performance of the disc screen,” Veilleux says.
Turning to Machinex
BRA decided to stick with the solutions provider that already understood the company’s dedication to quality. Machinex was the clear choice to make the improvements BRA had identified from the tests. Not only was Machinex intimately familiar with the current system, it also had a comprehensive understanding of packaging and recycling trends affecting the market.
“Machinex has been our partner in the development of new processes and methodologies to enhance our facility performance,” says Veilleux. “As usual, they were honest from the start about the advantages of each technology, and they had an open mind about what we were trying to accomplish while maintaining some sort of budget to ensure a reasonable payback.”
The decision to make improvements was made in the first quarter of 2017, and BRA opted for an installation in the last quarter of 2017. Machinex had a two-week window to make the upgrade happen.
“Machinex met our installation window of two weeks by having crews working around the clock until the project was completed,” Veilleux says. “They carefully planned the integration into our existing system and the impact on the rest of the equipment. Every part of the upgrade was planned and triple checked to ensure an efficient demo phase, install and startup.”
The installation included an upgrade of the Machinex OCC screen to a larger one with larger shafts to reduce wrapping and improve performance. The ONP screen was replaced with a MACH Hyspec optical sorter. Machinex not only listened to BRA but also offered expert advice even when it differed from what the client had in mind.
“Our initial focus was on ballistic separators without much focus on the optical sorter, but they showed us the options, and it became evident what our direction needed to be,” Veilleux recalls.
The optical sorter cleans the ONP by removing the metals, plastic film, brown cartons and cardboard out of the stream. It was the exact solution BRA needed.
Worth the investment
Now, a few months into working with the new MACH Hyspec optical sorter and Machinex OCC screen, Veilleux is seeing the results he was hoping for.
“The upgrade was well worth it,” he says. “We have improved the quality of all of our commodities because every piece of technology is doing what it was designed to do and none of them are overloaded.”
And the upgrade accomplished everything BRA was hoping to do. “We have minimized the production of mixed paper, and we have increased the production of quality ONP and OCC that meets and exceeds the new China requirements,” Veilleux says.
Would Veilleux work with Machinex again? “Absolutely,” he says. “They are simply the best in the industry.”
He elaborates by saying, “They have the ability to simplify a very complex system with user-friendly interfaces, and they are passionate about harnessing every bit of efficiency from all the components provided.”
Tallahassee, Florida-based Marpan Recycling opened a single- stream MRF in 2011. The company had extensive experience in C&D processing. This experience caused company president Kim Williams to break from tradition and go with the screens he knew could get the job done.
GK makes a fantastic product. Whatever they do, they do it over the top with the quality they put into it.” Kim Williams
Single-stream system suppliers were all using a disc screen, and it had several disadvantages. “I just thought I didn’t want that kind of screen,” Williams recalls. He found a better way with General Kinematics.
Joe Grell, VP Heavy Capacity Products, Rice Lake Weighing Systems
1. How do plants know which truck scales they should purchase for their application?
The biggest differentiator in the truck scale industry is longevity. A durable truck scale should be selected to meet the plant’s specific needs based on the number of daily transactions and axle configurations of the vehicle.
2. What is included in the truck scale engineering process?
There are many facets and people involved in the total engineering process. Expert engineers should be involved in every stage of truck scale manufacturing, from design conception to the final coat of paint and quality check. Material quality, craftsmanship and design expertise are all factors to ensure a superior product.
3. What factors are considered during the engineering process?
The truck scale’s environment, the type of material being weighed, the maximum number of trucks being weighed in a day, the maximum weight of a single truckload and individual axle loads are all considerations when engineering a truck scale.
4. What are new trends in truck scale production that lead to longer life in the field?
It is all about perfecting the production process. For example, by cleaning all raw steel before fabrication and again before painting, you will see an improved product at the end of the line. Manufacturers are also investing in high-quality employees as well as robotics.
5. How can plants justify the cost of a custom engineered truck scale?
The total cost of ownership for a high-quality truck scale is actually lower than a cheaper, low-quality scale when the length of time the scale will provide reliable service is considered. If a plant really wants a truck scale to last more than 20 years, investing in a custom engineered truck scale is worth the relatively modest difference in price.
