Author Archive

Come visit Wendt Corporation at the 2012 ISRI Convention and Exposition at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, April 15-19. Wendt will be in Booth 1029 along with it’s strategic partners: TITECH, Bowe Rotors, and MTB Recycling. Stop by to learn more about automobile shredding, non ferrous metal separation, metals sorting, and wire chopping.

Bill Close, Applications Engineer at Wendt Corporation, was featured in an article about metals sorting on page 54 in Recycling Today’s November issue. Wendt has a strategic partnership with TITECH and provides a full range of Sensor, NIR, Optical, and X-Ray equipment used for recovering and separating metals. In the article, Bill talks about how automobile shredding operators can capture the incremental value of metals with sorting technology. Read the article at: http://bit.ly/vQUP4s

Mr. Koksal is a Mechanical Engineer and started working at Wendt in 2008. In his roles he has designed plant layouts, created general arrangement sales drawings, visited customer sites, and designed large non ferrous systems to optimize customer’s operations. His new role as Project Manager will leverage his experience with concept and design to include oversight of installation and commissioning.

Mr. Koksal will continue to report to Rick Howe, Engineering Manager. “Wendt’s continued success has driven significant growth in the engineering department. We have increased our Project Management team in order to support our customers and to maintain customer satisfaction.” Howe stated. “Kemal’s promotion to Project Manager will be seamless due to his experience at Wendt and time spent working with our customers.”

Wendt Corporation has announced the acquisition of an additional
facility near Buffalo, New York. The 149,000 square foot facility will house
all of Wendt Corporation’s manufacturing functions which are used in building
its Automobile Shredders and Non Ferrous Separation Plants. With the rapid
growth that Wendt has experienced over the past several years, additional floor
space and increased overhead crane capacity are required to support the volume
and scale of Wendt Corporation’s manufacturing activities. This increased
capacity will allow Wendt to handle all of its current manufacturing, and it
will provide additional internal capacity for manufacturing functions which are
currently subcontracted outside of Western New York.

President, Tom Wendt commented, “Due to the performance of our
Automobile Shredding and Non Ferrous Separation Plants, we have experienced
significant growth. As a result of our success, we needed a new building that
could handle all of our manufacturing. Our existing building will be used for a
complete Test Center for our customers, as well as house our expanding
Engineering and Sales departments.”

Improvements and renovations have already begun and Wendt expects
to begin moving into the new facility by the end of the year.

Minimizing Risk with a Back-Up Rotor

For automobile shredding operations, the rotor is the heart the shredder. The
performance of the rotor not only dictates the level of material throughput and
quality of the shred, it is directly related to the overall profitability of
the shredder operation.

The wear and tear of everyday shredding operations takes a toll on rotors and they
eventually need to be replaced. The need to replace a rotor can occur in a
couple of different time frames. A planned event where the rotor has been worn
down to the point where it needs to be replaced or rebuilt, or an unplanned
event such as a catastrophic failure caused by processing an “unshreddable”.
Since most shredders operate in environments that require maximum productivity,
shutting down the shredder for a period of time while the rotor is rebuilt is
not an option. While it is easy to schedule the purchase of a new rotor for a
planned replacement, predicting when an unplanned event will occur is not
possible. With industry lead times for rotors ranging from 18-34 weeks,
shredder operators need to have a back-up plan in place.

Wendt Corporation can help minimize the risk associated with a planned or unplanned
event through its partnership with Bowe Rotors. Wendt not only offers new
rotors that can be staged as back-ups, Wendt also offer customers the option to
purchase and reserve plate stock which significantly reduces lead time in
rebuilding a rotor.

American Cast Iron and Pipe Company in Birmingham, Alabama understands the need to have
a rotor back-up plan. ACIPCO operates one of the world’s largest continuous arc
furnaces which requires a constant stream of scrap. In order to ensure their
on-site shredder is able to supply consistent scrap to their furnace, ACIPCO
stocks a back-up of all major components including a shredder rotor. ACIPCO’s
current rotor rotation system consists of a rotor in the shredder mill, a
back-up rotor on-site, and plate reserved with Wendt Corporation waiting for
the next rebuild.

When the discs on ACIPCO’s current rotor reach the end of their useful life, the
rotor is removed and replaced with the back-up rotor. The worn rotor is sent to
Bowe Rotors to be rebuilt using the existing shaft and spacers. When the rotor
is received for rebuilding, Bowe removes the worn discs, cuts and machines the
reserved plate to spec, re-assembles the rotor, and ships the rebuilt rotor
back to the customer. Once ACIPCO receives the rebuilt rotor, it then becomes their back-up.

Mike Chesnut works in ACIPCO’s engineering department and oversees the shredder,
“Keeping a spare rotor helps us prevent downtime and stocking plate with Wendt
significantly reduces our lead time for the rebuild. We initially looked at all
of the major suppliers and found that Wendt and Bowe provided the best value. We have been very satisfied.”

Bowe offers a full line of rotors exclusively through Wendt including disc, barrel,
spider, spur, and star rotors. “Bowe Rotors has built over 350 rotors for automobile
shredders and is the industry standard for rotors,” stated Jim Armstrong, Rotor
and Casting Specialist at Wendt. “Bowe has the experience to build a rotor that
stays tight during operation, but comes apart easily for rebuilding.” Together
Wendt and Bowe have built over 75 rotors.

To learn more about how Wendt Corporation and Bowe Rotors can help your shredding
operation, please contact Jim Armstrong.

Wendt has named Richard (Rick) Howe as its new Engineering Manager.

 Mr. Howe, formerly Director of Engineering for Hover-Davis, Inc, will lead all aspects of the company’s engineering functions.  Rick’s experience includes nearly 20 years in professional engineering, sales, marketing, and management with an emphasis on leading successful start-ups.  In addition to his tenure as Director of Engineering with Hover-Davis, Rick also served as their VP of Global Sales and Marketing.  He has also successfully started his own business as well as revitalized an industrial distribution company.

 Rick will report directly to Tom Wendt, President of Wendt Corporation. “We are excited to welcome Rick as Wendt continues to grow. Rick’s experience and background in engineering, sales, and leadership will be an asset to our company,” Tom commented, “We are consistently investing to improve and expand our product line while streamlining our processes.  Rick will play a key role in these efforts as Wendt strives to lead the industry and exceed our customer’s expectations.”

Visit Wendt, TITECH, mtb Recycling, and Bowe Rotors in Booth 1011 at the 2011 ISRI Convention in Los Angeles, CA. The convention will run from April 5 thru April 9 at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

Representatives from Wendt, TITECH, mtb Recycling, and Bowe will be on hand to answer questions about automobile shredding, non ferrous separation systems, shredder rotors, wire chopping, and tire recycling. 

We look forward to seeing you there.

Copper prices have reached record levels and are forecasted to keep rising. The growing demand in developing countries like India and China, mixed with limited supply, have many forecasting the current prices of $4.00 per pound to increase even higher. This trend has shredder operators asking how they can capitalize on this opportunity and remove copper from their Zorba.

The answer to this question is the Wendt/TITECH CombiSense. The CombiSense is a high-production separation machine used in sorting different types of shredded non-ferrous feed stock to produce high purity metal fractions. The CombiSense uses a combination of sensor technology and the most advanced high resolution cameras to separate material by color, shape, size, conductivity, and brightness. Various materials can be targeted and separated including brass, zinc, stainless steel, circuit boards, coins, and most importantly copper.

One operator who has already figured this out and is currently capitalizing on today’s market conditions is Bobby Helbein at Southern Metals Co. in Charlotte, North Carolina. Around 2007, Bobby decided he wanted to capture the incremental value that his brokers were benefiting from by separating his metal and creating high grade products.

After researching the process, Bobby contacted Wendt to have his materials tested by our TITECH CombiSense.  He liked the results that he saw and he purchased the unit to replace his hand-pickers. “We tried to pick as much copper and brass as we could, but there is no way you can hand-pick as well as this machine can find it.” Bobby currently uses the CombiSense to separate zinc, stainless steel, brass, and copper.  He believes he has improved “from a 40% sort to almost 100%.” Within two years, it was clear to Bobby that he had already paid-off his machine. “I am glad I made this purchase. It has performed beyond my expectations – it is absolutely doing what the folks at Wendt Corporation said it would and more.” Bobby continued that the after-the-sale support “has been outstanding and I couldn’t ask for better customer service.”

Contact Wendt to find out how you can use the CombiSense to capitalize on today’s copper market opportunities.

Come learn about Wendt Shredding and Separation Systems at ISRI’s Northern Ohio & Pittsburgh Chapters Joint Vendor Expo on Wednesday, Jan 19, 2011 at Avalon Golf and Country Club Buhl Park in Hermitage, Pennsylvania. Wendt will have a booth to answer any questions you have about copper and non-ferrous separation and inform you about the latest in shredder technology. We hope to see you there.