ACE: Stainless steel industrial shock absorbers – customized solution for car washes

At the beginning of this application was the goal of Udo Groß-Schnellenkamp and his design team to make modern car washes even easier to maintain and more efficient. The team works at MTE GmbH from Viersen in the Rhineland, a supplier of electronic and technological products that has made a name for itself both by providing expertise and by developing processes for automated car wash technology. As a subsidiary of Düsseldorf-based CleanCar AG, MTE GmbH is responsible, among other things, for planning and implementing video surveillance systems at car wash centers. This is done in the vicinity of petrol pumps and car washes against the background of incident prevention and thus for the protection of customers and employees, such as with a network-based video surveillance system at the CleanCar branch in the Berlin district of Treptow-Köpenick, which MTE planned and implemented.

According to CleanCar AG, its customers use the services of the 28 car wash centers spread across Germany and Austria more than 3 million times a year. In order to ensure fast, thorough and smooth operation everywhere, the facilities are constantly being further developed. This also applies to the one in Neuss, where Udo Groß-Schnellenkamp and his team optimized the drive and structure of the Top-Tex easy design as part of the project described here. On the one hand, the aim was to achieve instantaneous, rebound-free up and down movements of the swivel arms driven by pneumatic cylinders. On the other hand, these should always be able to reach their end position safely so that the entire construction is protected during continuous operation. In this way, downtimes due to maintenance and repair work can be reduced to a minimum. To master this task, MTE used a large number of high-quality standard components for the design, including industrial shock absorbers.

Requirements that are tough: Conventional dampers corrode

For initial tests, Udo Groß-Schnellenkamp ordered adjustable dampers from the Magnum series from ACE Stoßdämpfer GmbH. Due to its robust, modern sealing technology, high energy absorption in a compact design, integrated fixed stop and large damping bandwidth, this series is considered the reference class for medium-sized industrial shock absorbers by design engineers. MTE then carried out initial tests with these adjustable magnums in Neuss in order to determine precise values for the continuous operation of the system. This approach was chosen because important characteristics were not known in this case. Among other things, this was due to the brush rollers that are attached to the swivel arms. Neither the design software nor ACE’s calculation program, which in most design cases ACE or end customers use to determine the ideal dampers for the respective design, was able to predict how much water the brushes would soak up during operation. As a result, it was not possible to predict exactly how large the mass forces to be dampened during continuous swivel operation would be.

After the adjustable industrial shock absorbers had been adjusted according to the various test series and the test operation had been running for some time, it became apparent that a shock absorber adjustment was necessary, especially as the large amount of water containing cleaning agents led to rust on the shock absorbers used. Udo Groß-Schnellenkamp therefore contacted the technical advisors at ACE Stoßdämpfer GmbH and agreed with them to continue the series of tests already started with similar adjustable shock absorbers in order to get closer to the optimum setting for continuous operation. At the same time, ACE was invited to carry out on-site tests to gain a more detailed picture of the condition of the test dampers, the system and the operating conditions. For this purpose, the technical consultants from the specialist for damping solutions of all kinds traveled to Neuss with various adjustable shock absorbers from nearby Langenfeld. This is a service that the company offers worldwide, even to customers much further afield, thanks to a well-developed sales structure.

ACE has achieved its leading position not only because of the services that go with its high-quality products, but also because the sales engineers, in conjunction with the technical department, are able to adapt their products to the prevailing conditions until an optimum solution is found. This ability was also important in the further course of this case.

Shining solution: stainless steel components provide damping in continuous operation

Christopher Berning was the ACE sales engineer who inspected the defective dampers and analyzed the exact requirements on site. In retrospect, the aforementioned environmental conditions played a key role for him: “We provided MTE with samples of various adjustable industrial shock absorbers, which could be adapted even better to the forces of the swivel arms according to the values determined by the customer. We accepted the rust and possible damage to the sealing package due to water and washing chemicals in order to transfer the determined values to one of our self-adjusting industrial shock absorbers made of stainless steel at the end of the test phases. In the end, Magnum MC3350EUM shock absorbers were determined to be the most suitable for the task, which we adapted precisely to the conditions on site and then installed,” he explains.

The types mentioned are M33x1.5 mm construction elements weighing 1.5 kg each with a stroke of 23.2 mm. Thanks to their continuous thread, they are easy to integrate into any construction, even existing ones, and are characterized by their energy absorption of 170 Nm/stroke. This corresponds to an energy absorption of 75,000 Nm per hour, with which they can cope with continuous operation in a busy car wash such as those used by CleanCar. At peak times, over 120 washes per hour are carried out per branch. The effective masses of at least 100 kg to a maximum of 420 kg to be dampened by these machine elements with a piston reset time of 0.03 seconds without rebound also provide sufficient clearance. This is particularly true for this case, in which the known weight of the swivel arms had to be added to that of the brush rollers and, as an unknown factor, that of the constantly changing quantities of water contained therein.

In this case, it was crucial for MTE to find a partner in the market leader for industrial shock absorption technology that not only dealt with the specific situation very quickly, but was also able to deliver within a short space of time, both literally and proverbially.

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Further links

👉 www.ace-ace.de  

Photo: ACE Stoßdämpfer GmbH