Selection And Sizing Of Screens

Modern vibrating screening dates from about 1910 at which time the forerunner of the present day two bearing and four bearing circular motion inclined vibrating screens were first introduced. These simple machines consisted of a screen box holding some kind of a screening surface to which was attached an off-center shaft or a shaft with an off-center weight which was rotated. The rotation of these shafts caused a shivering motion to the screen box and produced the first vibrating screen. In the 1920's and early 30's, the box designs were improved and the mechanisms designs were also improved and by 1940, vibrating screens were an important part of most process plants. In the early days when the screen sizes were dictated by how much could be shoveled onto the screen box and by the force that a particular mechanism could produce, not much thought was given to the proper sizing of the particular units. As mechanism and body design improved the ability to predict vibrating screen capacity at various openings became more important. In the late 1930's, a set of empirical capacities came to be used. with few modifications, these capacities are still in use today, both by those companies that use a formula involving only the amount of fine material in a feed, and by those companies using a formula in which the total feed to a particular screen is used. In either method of calculation, the empirical values are based on these ideal conditions: (1) The material being fed to the screen contains 25% oversize. (2) The feed to the screen contains 40% half size material. (3) The material has a bulk density of 1.6 T/Cu.M. (100 lbs/cu.ft.). (4) The screening surface has an open area of 50%. (5) The material is dry, free flowing and relatively cubical. (6) The maximum screening efficiency required is between 90 and 95%. It is obvious that these conditions do not occur in natural or crushed size distributions. Therefore, modifications must be made to these empirical values to allow for the calculation of a vibrating screen for a particular set of conditions. Before we consider these various modifications, let us look at what happens to material as it is acted on by a vibrating screen so that we can better understand why the modifications are nec-