Solutions in Motion™

What does a custom design project look like at W.C. Branham? Here’s an inside look.

Stainless Systems has been a Branham customer since May of 2016, primarily purchasing stainless steel cylinders. Stainless is a necessity in their line of work because many of their industrial equipment customers are in the food processing industry. Everything has to meet stringent cleanliness standards and withstand harsh wash-down environments.  

Out of the blue, the company approached us with a new opportunity – creating a custom right angle gearbox, something completely different. This was a ground-up project. One of their own customers, a Tyson chicken processing plant, needed to replace a gearbox that had been installed a long time ago. Since it was probably custom-designed at the time, no off-the-shelf replacements were available. Could our Branham team help them start over?

There are always numerous factors that go into choosing the right linear actuator for an application. One consideration that is often overlooked is moment loading. Moment load comes into play when the cylinder is located some distance away from the actual load that it's lifting. That distance may be very short, but you have to account for it along with the weight of the load in order to spec the proper cylinder.

In this video, W.C. Branham’s Chad Randleman demonstrates how to properly proof-load and pre-tension the cables on your pneumatic cable cylinder.

In this video, W.C. Branham's Chad Randleman demonstrates how to make the adjustment on your mechanical caliper disc brake to compensate for pad wear.

Mechanical engineers design and build things that work. Tools. Machines. Entire systems such as automated industrial machinery. Many of these mechanical engineering projects are highly complex. And every one of them is different. Yet, choosing the best design and components for each project follows a similar path.

 A brake caliper is a device used to either stop or hold a rotating mass. It's designed to absorb the energy created by the rotating mass, and dissipate it as heat. This video blog gives you a quick look at the different styles and highlights their main functions. 

The engineering design process is a basic progression of several steps that mimic the process used in almost any problem-solving scenario.  The difference between a basic analytical problem and an engineered design problem is that an analytical problem has only one solution whereas a design problem can have many potential solutions. The job of an engineer or designer is to determine which custom product solution is the best based upon what the most desirable outcome is.

What are the differences between double live sided fixed mount caliper disc brakes and single live sided floating mount caliper disc brakes? Those are the two options available when specifying and designing in the caliper disc brake for an application.

Many models are available in both options and you can choose between the two depending on your mounting preference. Chad Ranldleman, W.C. Branham's VP Engineering and General Manager, discusses your options in this edition of Solutions in Motion.