We asked a few of our company leaders to analyze the year 2022 at Binkelman. Some of them shared their thoughts by drawing pictures with crayons, but we decided to only publish Brad Fitzgerald’s comments since he used words.

Q: What changes and/or growth did Binkelman experience in 2022?

Brad Fitzgerald, General Manager: We moved into our Bowling Green facility at the end of 2021 and the timing couldn’t have been better. Our larger space allowed us to make some strategic inventory investments, primarily in conveyor belting, electric motors and our other core products. As a result, our customers experienced little to no delay for those products. We were able to shield them from the supply chain issues that other providers had to deal with.

In 2022, we really grew our ability to help customers with their conveying equipment. Our Services division was busy all year removing, installing and vulcanizing conveyor belts. We were happy to double that business in the division’s first year of operation.

We’ve also grown our workforce by 20% over 2021 and we continue to invest in our employees. We have the best team in the industry and we’re very proud of the great work they do.

Q: How did those changes / growth positively impact your customers?

Brad Fitzgerald: Here’s an example. One of our best customers cycled through large volumes of one specification of conveyor belting from unplanned failures and we were able to keep them up and running with very little downtime. That belt specification was taking other providers up to 30 weeks to replace, but we had it in our inventory because we planned ahead.

Q: How does the company plan to serve customers even better in 2023?

Brad Fitzgerald: We will continue to build our inventories to support our customers. We’ll keep investing in our Services division so we can expand our capabilities. And, as always, we’ll prioritize investing in our people.

You seem like the kind of person who’s into hot, powdery materials.

Or maybe sintered ore is more your thing. Or taconite pellets. Or coke. Or cement.

Regardless, if you’re movin’ hot, hot stuff down your conveyor line, you should treat your belts to Solar-Shield® compounds from Continental and your pals at Binkelman.

“Solar-Shield heat-resistant compounds deliver high performance in extremely hot material applications,” said Brad Czerniak, Field Sales Manager for Continental. “They maintain their physical properties through continuous exposure, which results in better results for our customers. Plus, they’re made in the U.S.A.”

Choose from these four delicious options.

Solar-Shield Classic

Formulated for materials up to 350°F (180°C), this compound provides excellent heat and abrasion resistance. It has a terrific personality, too.

Solar-Shield Plus

You want your conveyor belts to stay flexible while resisting cover cracks and carcass delamination, don’t you? Of course you do! Only a dummy wouldn’t want that. Your new friend Solar-Shield Plus will lower operating costs by extending the life of your belts, even if they’re exposed to temperatures up to 400°F (200°C).

Solar-Shield Extreme

Talk about your superior heat resistance! Solar-Shield Extreme delivers. Just like your mom, it can handle hot material loads intermittently up to 750°F (400°C). And it prevents hardening and cracking of your conveyor belts. Let’s see your mom do that!

Solar-Shield Ultimate

If you ran a conveyor line on the surface of the sun, you’d want Solar-Shield Ultimate working for you. It’s designed for operations that move material above 750°F (400°C). Its heat resistance will extend your belt life by 2 to 3 times beyond other solutions, which means you can save up enough money to buy a bus ticket off the sun every now and then.

Czerniak added that “Solar-Shield Belting is baked throughout the entirety of the belt, so even as belt abrades, you’ll still get superior performance.”

Craving more information on Continental’s Solar-Shield products? Contact your Binkelman rep.

If you move aggregate all the live long day, you may be getting ready to shut down your conveyor operation for the winter months. While you could use that downtime to throw one righteous party, you’d probably be better served by tending to any necessary maintenance and repairs throughout your plant.

Your pals at Binkelman can help. We’ve partnered with Dodge to keep your conveyor systems running smoother than one of those giant smooth things. You’ve seen ‘em. They’re really smooth.

The Dodge team brings an industry-leading mechanical product portfolio to the table. Each Dodge component is designed, built and assembled to produce a complete Dodge package. That means you’ll enjoy predictable reliability during operation.

Dodge’s larger bearings help your gearboxes last longer. They adhere to AGMA bearing specifications with a minimum unadjusted L10 bearing rating of 5,000 hours for all bearings in the gearbox. That’s at least double the rating of competing designs.

And how ‘bout those Dodge reducers and mounted bearings? The Twin Tapered bushings and Imperial/ISN add up to faster installation and removal, less vibration and no fretting corrosion. They also feature the industry’s best seal technology with several layers of protection and advanced materials that provide big-time protection against contaminants.

Dodge makes their magic in U.S. facilities. They’re committed to producing state-of-the-art couplings, gearboxes, mounted bearings, drive components and conveyor pulleys and delivering a high level of customer service.

Wanna’ know more? Visit the Conveyor Maintenance page on our website or contact your Binkelman Account Manager.

Research shows that operating conveyor belts is a lot easier when you have all your fingers.

The best way to keep your fingers on your hands instead of in a bloody pile on the floor is to get wise about proper belt maintenance.

That’s why Binkelman has teamed with the experts at Flexco to provide on-site belt fastener and maintenance safety training. Trust us, the Flexco folks are freaks about conveyor belts and helping you keep all your personal parts firmly attached. The information they provided to our team at a recent workshop will help us help you stay safe, and allow you to pursue your side hustle as a semi-pro knuckle model.

Keeping You Safe

In September 2022, Flexco Territory Manager Joe Sall worked with the Binkelman gang to bring us up to speed on installing fasteners for specific belting and conveyors using Flexco’s proprietary tools. This training ensures that we’re installing Flexco products properly and providing our customers with the best results.

Look, we’re not gonna say that Flexco likes us likes us, but it’s hard to deny that we have a special relationship, the kind they make TV movies about. “Not every Flexco distributor has the capability offerings that Binkelman does,” said Sall. “Their in-house and field product installation of Flexco products really stands out. And, clearly, they’re committed to deepening their Flexco knowledge.”

Multiple Avenues for Learning

Flexco is nothing if not a bottomless well of knowledge, and they’re not shy about dunking you in head-first. Want to know more? We recommend the product spotlight and installation videos on their YouTube channel and the Flexco website.

They also offer online training via Flexco University, which includes the recently released Flexco Essentials eLearning Series.

Have questions about our Flexco partnership? Give us a call and we’ll be glad to chat belt fasteners.

There’s a whole mess of reasons Binkelman partnered with Dodge to better serve our customers in the grain industry. For one thing, Dodge products enjoy a great reputation for moving grain reliably through each phase of processing.

That should be good enough, right? Well, just keep your pants on, friend.

Look at this range of sexy Dodge products, would ya’? Just look at it!

Mounted bearings

• Imperial spherical bearings
• Type E tapered bearings
• ISAF – spherical bearings
• Hydraulic ISAF & ISNX spherical bearings

Gear reducers

• Torque-Arm II
• Motorized Torque-Arm II
• Magnagear XTR®
• Quantis® RHB/ILH/MSM

Are you still lookin’?

Power transmission components

• DM moment couplings
• Raptor elastomeric coupling
• Mechanical drive components
• Conveyor components

And have you heard about Dodge PT Wizard? It’s what all the cool kids are calling “the latest evolution in online selection tools.”

• With PT Wizard you can browse the Dodge inventory, see pricing, select products and place your orders on one platform.
• It uses an intuitive visual interface to help you choose both individual products and packaged solutions.
• With the customized selection process, you can increase efficiency by setting default preferences.
• Dodge poured decades of engineering expertise into PT Wizard, so you can trust that the selections are accurate.

Ready to learn more? Talk with your Binkelman rep or visit PTWizard.com.

When you need a hose assembly, don’t call on your grocer, the town pharmacist or that drunk next door to make it for you. Count on Binkelman.

Why?

All three of our locations – Bowling Green, Piqua and Saginaw – are Continental and Danfoss Aeroquip-certified hose centers.

Look, we’re not saying your drunk neighbor couldn’t get lucky and put together a decent hose assembly now and then, but we’re sober experts, which means we deliver the right assembly every time. And we’d never throw up in your yard late at night. Plus, we were clear-headed enough to put together the following load of free insight. Let’s see Tipsy McBoozer do that.

Ready?

We follow the crimp spec when working with hydraulic hose

We test your hydraulic fittings and hoses to meet industry specifications, including SAE J517 and ISO 18752.

We run leakage and burst tests to ensure that the hose, fittings and hose / fitting interface are at the tested crimp OD.

We also put your hose assembly through at least four shots at the impulse test. It’s performed at the specified test pressure, impulse cycles and rated temperature.

Proper installation is key to your success

You can prevent restricted fluid flow, slow system reaction time, hose failure and even operator injury by routing your hydraulic hose properly. Keep away from everything on this attractive, bulleted, alphabetical list:

• Bending the hose past the recommended radius
• Damage to seal surfaces
• Flattening
• Kinking
• Opportunities for abrasion
• Side load
• Tensile load
• Thread damage
• Twisting and distortion

Don’t put off preventive maintenance

It may be tempting to take workday naps in your car, but that time might be better spent inspecting your hydraulic hose assemblies. Identifying problems early can reduce downtime and dangerous working conditions.

So, check for proper hose routing. While the machine is down, inspect your hoses for pin holes, abrasions, stretching and any worn areas. And make sure your hydraulic fluid meets the standards of your equipment manufacturer.

Your Binkelman Account Manager can evaluate your hose routing and assist you with preventive maintenance. And how is that possible? Because he’s not loaded up with hooch like you-know-who!

Give us a call whenever we can help.

People often ask how we remove slabs of conveyor belt from the massive rolls in our warehouses, and then transport them and install them onto our customers’ systems. If it’s late at night and we’re sleeping, we won’t answer those questions. But if we’re coherent, we’ll oblige with a detailed response.

“Most of the belt we receive is delivered in rolls that are 72″ wide by at least 1,000’ long and weigh thousands of pounds,” said Binkelman Marketing Manager Rebecca Conrad. “Once it arrives, we assign a unique number to each roll.” Sometimes we’ll give a roll a nickname, too, especially if it has an unusual aura or a personality flaw.

“By the time many customers are ready for a new belt, they’ve made changes to their conveying system,” Conrad said, while simultaneously doodling a suggestive cartoon of herself and a roll of Continental ContiTitan 660/2 lying on a blanket in the woods. “Our Account Managers are happy to work with customers to gather information about their system and any recent adjustments, and then recommend the correct belt specification. We enter that info into a belt specification program that calculates the suggested belt specs.”

A Binkelman conveyor specialist will select the belt that works best for the customer’s system, enter all sorts of fun info into our computer system, and schedule the roll to be cut. Rickey Cousino – our lead belt slitter – has 15 years on the job.

He uses a forklift to load the belt into the slitter, set the desired width and length and then carefully feeds the belt through the slitter. Rickie takes pride in his role, making sure that no blemishes or manufacturer’s defects slip by. “Rickie has seen thousands of feet of belt over the years,” said Conrad, “so he knows what he’s looking for.” In fact, he’s starting to look a little like conveyor belt, which probably is not good.

After the belt is approved, it’s unloaded from the slitter and prepped for delivery to the customer. In some cases, we’ll install mechanical fasteners to each end of the belt to ensure a quicker installation once it’s on the customer’s system. Other times, the Binkelman Conveyor Maintenance team will install the belt onto the system using a vulcanized splice. Either way, our customers are always throwing a “new belt party” – complete with confetti – shortly after calling Binkelman.

With a dedicated team and more than $2 million of belt inventory onsite, we can have your conveyor operation up and running within 24 or 48 hours. Contact the Binkelman team today for more information.

Nothing ruins your day quicker than slicing off a cherished body part while performing conveyor belt maintenance. And it’s easy enough to do when using an old-school utility knife or a rusty ninja sword.

But with the right tools, you can lift, clamp and cut belts faster and easier, while dramatically improving the odds you’ll finish the workday with all your fingers still attached.

The Flexco Power Belt Cutter

For belts that need a good slicing, we recommend the Flexco Power Belt Cutter. It’s designed for all types of belts, even fabric plied belts and those made from tough solid-woven PVC. You can cut rubber belts up to 2 inches and PVC belts up to 360 P.I.W. Choose the model with a cord for use in your shop, or go cordless if you work in the field.

Are you right-handed or left-handed? It doesn’t matter with this tool. You can switch the adjustable handle to the side you prefer. If you’re middle-handed, though, you’re screwed.

And as if all that fabulousness isn’t enough, the sealed ball bearings make it simple to feed your belt into the cutter. And it’s the spring-loaded blade guard that prevents you from choppin’ off anything you’d prefer to not chop off.

The Flex-Lifter Belt Lifter

Speaking of severed appendages, another easy way to spew gore on the jobsite is to lift a belt the wrong way. The Flex-Lifter Belt Lifter is a true life (and finger) saver; it can support belts up to 96 inches wide and upwards of 6000 pounds.

This tool is capable of hoisting all that weight on a variety of terrains, and can be lowered or raised thanks to its sexy pair of extension legs. It also has adjustable wings, which make dealing with troughed or flat topside belts a lot simpler.

Need more perks? The Flex-Lifter is also ridiculously portable and can be carried by hand. It’s a nifty tool all-around, and sure beats using pry bars or an underpaid intern to do the lifting. (Sorry, Steve. We’ll send you that thumb if we find it.)

The TUG HD Belt Clamp

Last but certainly not least is the humble belt clamp. Keeping your belt secure during repairs could mean the difference between getting a concussion and not getting a concussion. If you prefer the latter option, consider adding a few TUG HD Belt Clamps to your tool collection.

Each clamp provides even tensioning across the width of the belt, and accommodate belt thickness of up to 2.25 inches. Their high-grade aluminum and steel construction gives them the oomph to handle six to eight tones of conveyer girth.

To sweeten the deal, the TUG HD clamps also feature portable modular components and third-party tested safety factors that meet or exceed industry standards. And best of all (no, we aren’t letting this go), they won’t slice you open like a fleshy pomegranate under a butter knife.

You only have so many fingers, so talk with your Binkelman rep today about the Flexco Power Belt Cutter, the Flex-Lifter Belt Lifter, and the TUG HD Belt Clamp.