Conductix-Wampfler USA Launches New “RhinoReel™” Mill Duty Spring Reel May 4

Conductix-Wampfler USA will launch its new, patented mill duty spring-driven reel - dubbed the RhinoReel - at the 2015 AISTech Iron and Steel Trade Show, May 4-7 in Cleveland. Pete Kirst, Market Manager, mentioned that “a special unveiling ceremony will occur at the Conductix-Wampfler booth 2623 at 3 pm on Monday May 4 . All show visitors are welcome to help us celebrate!”

This mill duty reel was developed to greatly increase the operating life of the spring motor; especially valuable in high-demand applications found in mills. With the new “linear spring motor”, the RhinoReel will cycle three times longer than current spring reels on the market. Every mill has a significant number of spring-driven cable reels in operation. These are primarily used at the top of overhead cranes that have magnets or grapples to move materials and on transfer cars that move materials horizontally. Historically, reels on the market retract (rewind) the cable using a set of concentrically wound springs, like those used in a spring-driven clock. The cables involved in powering magnets and other device are often quite heavy and can measure 60-80 feet long. The reel must be able to lift the cable upwards to the spool as the magnet is raised. Reels in this application operate almost continuously, so the number of duty-cycles required is quite high. To get more power, the springs are often ganged together “in parallel” to achieve the needed torque to retract the cable.

The problem with existing spring-driven cable reels is that spring life is limited to roughly 30,000 cycles before one or more of them fail. This is plenty for most spring reel applications, but for high-cycle rate applications, it becomes costly to stock extra spring motors and a major job replace them in the field. A spring reel failure can cause downtime in critical applications.

Conductix-Wampfler has developed a radically new spring motor concept– the Linear Spring. Ben Hiebenthal, the Conductix-Wampfler design engineer who received a patent on the design, stated that, “By using a ball screw coupled with a coil spring – the same type used in off-road motor vehicles – I designed a reel spring motor that offers three-times longer life than a traditional spring motor. According to our tests, the motor will achieve 100,000 cycles versus 30,000 before it needs to be replaced.” If a spring ever needs to be replaced, it is a matter of releasing the tension and inserting a new one. The spring motor design has been awarded Patent # 8,888,033 B2. Besides the exceptional spring motor life, the rest of the reel is ruggedly built and designed for very demanding conditions found in mills.

For more information, contact Conductix-Wampfler USA, or click here to view the catalog.