Toledo, Ohio
For Immediate Release

March 1, 2021

Binkelman Corporation has announced the acquisition of the Great Lakes Conveyor Maintenance to launch their services division for bulk material handling facilities in Ohio and Michigan. Binkelman has acquired the assets, people, and customer contacts and will operate under the Binkelman Corporation brand.

“Binkelman and Great Lakes Conveyor Maintenance have been working together with a shared vision for over a decade to provide exceptional service to our customers at the highest levels of quality and safety, it only makes sense to bring them on to the Binkelman team.” – Brad Fitzgerald, General Manager, Binkelman Corporation

Great Lakes Conveyor Maintenance, Inc. began operations in February 1997 to service conveyor belt users in all types of industry.

Great Lakes Conveyor Maintenance has 50 plus years of combined experience servicing the conveyor belt industry. Great Lakes Conveyor Maintenance, Inc. have the capabilities to remove and install conveyor belting, hot vulcanize splice, cold cure vulcanizing and mechanically splice and repair all types of conveyor belting in all types of belting applications. Other capabilities include re-lagging (cold cure process) conveyor pulleys and rubber line chutes and hoppers both in the field and in its Toledo, Ohio facility.

Binkelman is pleased to announce that Tim Muck has joined the Binkelman team. Tim brings over 25 years of experience in the material handling and conveyance systems operations from The Anderson Inc. where he was responsible for the operation, maintenance, and management of the Metamora Grain Facility. Tim fills the new position of Services Manager and his role is to work with our Binkelman team to manage, formalize, and grow our service offerings.

“I am excited to join the Binkelman family in my new role with this established and respected company. I look forward to working as a team to develop and grow the Services Division of Binkelman Corporation and serving our customers.” – Tim Muck, Services Manager, Binkelman Corporation

Contact Info:
Rebecca Conrad, Marketing Manager
Rebecca.conrad@binkelman.local
419-344-3415

When you’re conveying powdery or viscous material, the last thing you want is carryback on the belt. It makes an awful mess along the conveyor line and requires heavy-duty cleanup efforts throughout the course of operation.

We recently worked with a lime processing plant to solve this very problem. The excessive carryback on their lime conveyor line was accumulating beneath the belt and building up on the return rollers and pulleys. The issue not only increased the plant’s housekeeping costs, it also made proper belt tracking difficult and resulted in unscheduled downtime for their operations.

Binkelman’s Dave VanLiere reviewed the line operations and determined that the imported conveyor belt running the line was the source of all the problems. Dave recommended installing a non-stick belt to improve operations, but not just any non-stick belt would do – it needed to be a ContiClean belt.

Other non-stick belts use a coating applied to a standard belt, but the coating wears off quickly and carryback problems return.

ContiClean’s non-stick material is integrated right into the rubber so it maintains its superior material release qualities, even as the belt ages, making this American-made belt ideal for conveying a variety of materials across many industries.

Our client was so pleased with how the ContiClean belt improved their lime processing line, they’ve replaced all their conveyor operations with ContiClean belts.

If your operation is suffering from all the issues that result from material carryback, the Binkelman team will help you find a Smart Solution™.

Contact us today to set up a consultation. You can even text us at 800.862.4673 to schedule an appointment and share photos of the equipment and operational setup.

Texting is fun. Texting burns calories. Texting makes you a better lover (proof pending).

Texting also saves you time when placing your Binkelman orders and checking on prices, parts availability, delivery status, warranty information and technical tips. You can even text us PDFs, pictures of the parts you need, and a list of your hopes and dreams.

The magic is made possible by ProKeep, the cloud-based texting service designed specifically for distributors and their customers, but there’s no app to download. Just text to the same number you use to call us: 800.862.4673.

When asked if he liked texting Binkelman, customer Marv H. replied, “Yeah.” What more do you need to know?

If you have questions, give us a call at 800.862.4673 or email us here.

(Texting produces no fumes and has not been shown to promote bloating in laboratory tests.)

An aggregate customer recently installed a conveyor and began experiencing issues with material carry back.

They were conveying sand and stone from their dredge, which included all sizes of stone mixed with very wet sand. The material carry back was making a mess on the return side of the conveyor – which required a lot of man hours to clean up – and also causing tracking issues with the conveyor belt.

To solve the issue, the customer installed a Flexco MMP Medium-Duty Precleaner and a standard quick-mount spring tensioner. This solution worked well in the short term, but due to the volume of material being conveyed, the blade needed to be adjusted on a weekly basis.

The rigors of conveyance and the location of the cleaner, which required a manlift to re-tension the unit, made it difficult to keep the cleaner blade at the proper tension to get thorough consistent cleaning of the belt.

Binkelman and Flexo representatives made a visit to the customer’s worksite and determined that this was an ideal application for Flexco’s Portable Air Tensioning System (PAT).

Flexco’s PAT system is a belt cleaner tensioning system that uses air or nitrogen to provide constant pressure for premium cleaning. The PAT system uses air springs to tension the cleaner blades and requires minimal maintenance as the blade wears.

Since the worksite was in a remote location without plant air or nitrogen, we also used the PAT air tanks, which allowed us to mount the tanks and control box in an easily accessible location to do the small amount of tensioning that is required.

We were also able to convert their existing spring tension system over to the PAT to help save cost, and we also added a Flexco MHS Heavy-Duty Secondary Belt Cleaner to the PAT system to further increase their cleaning efficiency.

With installation help from Flexco’s Joe Sall and the outstanding performance of the PAT system, the customer’s carry back issues have completely resolved. They were very pleased with their investment and have even asked for our assistance solving some of their other issues.

The Binkelman team recently worked with an industrial chemical company to address a corporate-wide safety issue with their hose fittings.

The company needed a camlock hose fitting with quick attach and release capabilities. These types of fittings are easy enough to come by, however, this company needed fittings that could stand up to rigorous daily use and maintain seal integrity when exposed to aggressive fluids.

Their team evaluated several commonly used camlock fittings from other suppliers that met the material handling requirements, but none offered ease of use for the operators who connect and disconnect these hoses dozens of times daily.

Binkelman introduced them to Continental Contitech’s Insta-Lock Cam and Groove Fittings.

Insta-Lock’s simple design eliminates the need for additional clips, springs and bulky attachments that make traditional camlock fittings too cumbersome for frequent use. Special “palm pads” on the handles make it more comfortable to lock and prevent the pull rings from opening too far, making it easier to uncouple.

One of the ways we’ve helped our agricultural customers is replacing older straight bore shaft mounted gearboxes with Dodge Torque-Arm II reducers by utilizing their Short Shaft Twin Tapered Bushing Kit.

A long time ago, the only type of shaft mount gearboxes available were straight bore units and they didn’t require much shaft. In recent years, most manufacturers stopped making the straight bore units due to improved tapered bushing systems.

The problem is that if an existing straight bore unit goes bad, you can’t just swap it out because there isn’t enough shaft on the old unit to accommodate the newer tapered designs available from most manufacturers.

The Short Shaft Twin Tapered Bushing system is a far superior locking system compared to the older straight bore designs (which just used a keyway and setscrews), but the feature that makes it such a great problem solver for changing out old straight bore units is the amount of shaft required for installation.

These units are commonly located on top of grain bucket elevators, so they’re not easy to access or change. Before the short shaft bushing option, customers would need to replace the shaft which meant having to remove the head pulley, remove bearings (which usually get destroyed in the process), and un-splice and resplice the belt. Typically, this would all need to be done with a crane, so it’s a time-consuming and expensive process.

Binkelman has been able to offer the short shaft bushing kit, which only requires the customer to replace the gearbox – saving them time and money while upgrading their equipment.

Dodge TAII catalog PDF

Dodge Straight Bore catalog PDF