Creteheads, Owen Blevins, Concreteanswers.tv bringing you the internet’s most passionate show about concrete plants and equipment. Today I’m standing in front of a Horizontal Reversing Mixer from CON-E-CO, at Rohrer’s Quarry in Lititz, Pennsylvania. We’re going to show you one heck of a concrete mixer and how it works. So check it out! I’m going to share with you the top seven reasons why CON-E-CO’s Horizontal Reversing Mixer is perfect in today’s redi-mix market. No hydraulics, all variable speed, electric motors, no maintenance, no fuss, environmentally clean. No open gearing, which means no gear lube, environmentally friendly, and no maintenance. Because it’s sealed charging and discharging you have no splatter, which means a lot less maintenance. Whisper quiet operation, which reduces noise level and keeps the neighbors happy. Variable discharge rate controlled by a potentiometer up in the batch room, which allows the operator to control the charging speed of each individual truck. Non-tilting operation, which requires less overhead clearance and it’s a heck of a lot safer than a tilt mixer. A sealed mixing drum giving greater efficiency at catching dust and requiring less CFM to capture that dust. The history of the horizontal reversing mixer is pretty interesting. Starting in Europe about 25 years ago it came to the North American continent. My partner, Jay Robinson, about four years ago, went to CON-E-CO and said guys I think we need to get in the horizontal reversing mixer market. CON-E-CO listened and did their homework and now we have the only U.S. engineered and designed and manufactured horizontal reversing mixer. All CON-E-CO HRM’s are solid three quarter inch steel from end to end. Including the center section of the belly, we don’t drop down to half inch steel and we don’t for a reason. You’ve got an excess of 40,000 pounds of material being violently mixed inside this machine. You don’t want to compromise structural integrity in a mixer of this size with these capacities. The mixing and discharge panels are not welded to the inside structure of the CON-E-CO HRM, instead it’s bolted on using flush mount grade 8 bolts. They use flush mounts so they don’t interfere with the rotation of the tires; great way to go from a structural stand point. You’re looking at one of four 50 horse motors, driven by a VFD sitting at all four corners of the HRM. They in turn work in unison with each of the four Dodge gear drives right here and of course they all turn their own set of tires. CON-E-CO has the widest traction patch in the industry and these tires are custom made 23-inch diameter, made of rubber not urethane. Listen, there’s a place for urethane on one of these mixers, it’s inside the drum not the tires driving this thing, much higher co-efficient of friction with rubber. Hey, Google it guys if you don’t believe me. Rubber is a much better driver of these barrels than urethane, you don’t want slippage with tight mixes or large loads and rubber will ensure you won’t have that. We’re now going to show you the brains behind the HRM; this is the motor control center. Where we have the VFD which powers all four of the 50 horse drives. On the other side you’ll notice we have all of the schematics laid out and laminated for field servicing. Extremely convenient, again another CON-E-CO exclusive, great for your electrician and your folks servicing anything in the field. As with any piece of equipment it’s important to have easy serviceability in the field. CON-E-CO has thought of that when they designed this. There is a built in template here that allows us to align our tires if they ever get taken out for maintenance and or you change out this pillow block or your bearings. As you can see this thing just locks into place so you can have perfect field alignment every time. We are at the charging end of the horizontal reversing mixer the chute is lined with ceramic and the corners eutectic steel. Super wear items, 250,000 yards of concrete has been through this as well as cement and water through your discharge tubes. This urethane seal is where CON-E-CO has a huge advantage over its competition. CON-E-CO’s the only one who uses urethane, they’ve got it down, and they’ve got it dialed in. Our competitors use rubber, they problem with rubber is it forms memory and it’s just a mess back here. They haven’t figured out what CON-E-CO has which is how to keep the back of this baby clean. CON-E-CO’s done a great job of it. Our producers love it; it gives them minimal time at the end of the day to have to worry about cleaning it up and maintaining it. Now let’s go inside this bad boy. Creteheads, you’re inside the belly of the beast. CON-E-CO horizontal reversing mixer from the inside, a rare glimpse. Take a look here where we looked at the grade 8 bolts on the outside, they were flush mount, well this is what they are hanging onto. One of these blades with one inch thick urethane. Remember 250,000 yards through this beast and it’s holding up pretty darn well. Entire belly of this machine is coated with one inch urethane, also in an HRM less is more. You don’t want a lot of stuff hanging; you want to keep it minimal because you want to minimize your concrete build up. CON-E-CO does a great job of minimizing the support structure, yet maintaining structural integrity. Now we’re going to take a look at the backside of one of the belly blades in the HRM. Take a look here with me Creteheads, you’ll notice there’s a hole cut out on the backside of the blade. This allows concrete to flow through it, it keeps build up from accumulating on the backside of the blades. It means easier maintenance, our producers love this feature. This is the discharge end of the HRM. You’ll notice these are three large discharge blades that scoop the concrete up and discharge it into a mixer hopper. We’re at the discharge end of the mixer. Here you’ll see the three discharge blades all aligned in AR, dropping into the discharge chute which charges each and every truck. Creteheads I can talk till I’m blue in the face about how wonderful this horizontal reversing mixer from CON-E-CO is, but you need to go check it out in person. Send us an e-mail, give us a phone call, we’ll get you out here to see one of these things in action. These things mix in 30-45 seconds, we’ve timed them, and our producers love these products. Get out here to see them in the flesh. Maconcrete.com is our website; of course CON-E-CO.com and you know we love you at Concreteanswers.tv
