Concrete mixer

This portable concrete/mortar mixer has wheels and a towing tongue so that it can be towed by a motor vehicle and moved around the worksite by hand, and its rotation is powered by mains electricity. The lever allows the concrete/mortar to be tipped into a wheelbarrow.

An outdated model of a small-scale concrete mixer. These older mixers are heavy and can not be moved as easily. They are still however equipped with a electrical motor, so they do not pollute the surroundings

A concrete mixer (also commonly called a cement mixer) is a device that homogeneously combines cement, aggregate such as sand or gravel, and water to form concrete. A typical concrete mixer uses a revolving drum to mix the components. For smaller volume works portable concrete mixers are often used so that the concrete can be made at the construction site, giving the workers ample time to use the concrete before it hardens. An alternative to a machine is mixing concrete or cement by hand. This is usually done in a wheelbarrow; however, several companies have recently begun to sell modified tarps for this purpose.

The concrete mixer was invented by Columbus industrialist Gebhardt Jaeger.^[1]

Industrial mixers

Several different mixer types are used for rapid concrete production.

Today's market increasingly requires consistent homogeneity and short mixing times for the industrial production of ready-mix concrete, and more so for precast/prestressed concrete. This has resulted in refinement of mixing technologies for concrete production. Different styles of stationary mixers have been developed, each with it's own inherent strengths targeting different parts of the concrete production market. The most common mixers used today fall into 3 categories: Twin-shaft mixers, Vertical axis mixers (Pan and Planetary mixers) and Drum mixers (Reversing Drum and Tilting Drum).

Twin-shaft mixers are known for their high intensity mixing, and short mixing times. These mixers are typically used for high strength concrete, RCC and SCC, typically in batches of 2 - 6m³. The Vertical Axis mixers are most commonly used for precast and prestressed concrete. This style of mixer cleans well between batches, and is favoured for coloured concrete, smaller batches (typically 0.75 - 3m³), and multiple discharge points. Within this category, the Pan mixers are losing popularity to the more efficient Planetary (or counter-current) mixers as the additional mixing action helps in production of more critical concrete mixes (colour consistency, SCC, etc). The drum mixers (reversing drum mixer and tilting drum mixers) are utilized where large volumes of concrete are being produced (batch sizes of 3 - 9m³. This type of mixer dominates the ready-mixed market as it is known to be capable of high production speeds, ideal for slump concrete, and where overall cost of production is important. Drum mixers are know to have the lowest maintenance and operating cost of the three styles of mixers. All the mixer styles have their own inherent strengths and weaknesses, and all three styles of mixers are used throughout the world to varying degrees of popularity.

Concrete transport truck

Six-axle Advance Ready Mix truck

Front discharge truck

Volumetric Concrete Mixer

A rear–discharge concrete transport truck

Low-Profile Mining and Tunneling Concrete Mixer Truck

Special concrete transport trucks (in–transit mixers) are made to transport and mix concrete from a factory/plant to the construction yard. They are charged with dry materials and water, with the mixing occurring during transport. (Although, more modern plants load the truck with 'Ready Mixed' concrete. With this process, the material has already been mixed, and then is loaded into the truck. The ready mix truck maintains the material's liquid state, through agitation, or turning of the drum, until delivery.) The interior of the drum on a concrete truck is fitted with a spiral blade. In one rotational direction, the concrete is pushed deeper into the drum. This is the direction the drum is rotated while the concrete is being transported to the building site. This is known as "charging" the mixer. When the drum rotates in the other direction, the Archimedes' screw-type arrangement "discharges", or forces the concrete out of the drum. From there it may go onto chutes to guide the viscous concrete directly to the job site. If the truck cannot get close enough to the site to use the chutes, the concrete may be discharged into a concrete pump connected to a flexible hose, or onto a conveyor belt which can be extended some distance (typically ten meters). A pump provides the means to move the material to precise locations, multi-floor buildings, and other distance prohibitive locations.

"Rear discharge" trucks require both a driver and a "chuteman" to guide the truck and chute back and forth to place concrete in the manner suitable to the contractor. Newer "front discharge" trucks have controls inside the cab of the truck to allow the driver to move the chute in all directions. The first front discharge mixer was designed and built by Royal W. Sims of Holladay, Utah.

A six-axle truck has three "lift axles" -- the first two axles behind the cab (the pusher axles) and the rear-most axle (the tag axle) -- which can be lifted out of the way for off-road operation. When loaded, these axles distribute the weight of the truck. This distribution of weight is essential. Otherwise, roads most travelled on by vehicles of this size begin to break down. As an added benefit, these axles provide the driver better control of the vehicle during transport. The lift axles are equipped with brakes, and a system that lets them actually turn with the truck during turns, allowing manoeuvring that would otherwise be nearly impossible.

Concrete mixers generally do not travel far from their plant, as many contractors require that the concrete be in place within 90 minutes after loading. If the truck breaks down or for some other reason the concrete hardens in the truck, workers need to enter the barrel with jackhammers; dynamite is still occasionally used to break up hardened concrete in the barrel under certain circumstances.

Stephen Stepanian filed a patent application for the first truck mixer in 1916.^[2] Trucks weigh 20,000 pounds (9,100 kg) to 30,000 pounds (14,000 kg), and can carry roughly 40,000 pounds (18,000 kg) of concrete although many varying sizes of Mixer Truck are currently in use. The most common truck capacity is 8 cubic yards (6 m³).

Most concrete mixers in the UK are limited to a speed of 56 miles per hour (90 km/h).

Concrete Mixer Trailer

1 Yard Cart-Away Mixing Trailer

A variant of standard concrete transportation is the concrete or cement mixing trailer. These small versions of a transit-mix truck are used to supply short loads of concrete. These cart-away style trailers have a concrete mixing drum with a capacity of between 1-yard and 1.75 yards. Cart-aways are usually pulled behind a pick-up truck and batched from smaller batching systems. The mixing trailer system is popular with rental yards and building material locations, who use them to supply ready-mix to their regular customer base.

Television

On an episode of MythBusters, experiments are done to see if dynamite can be used to clean out hardened concrete from inside of a mixer truck, with limited practical results. For the finale, an excessive amount of explosive (800 lbs of commercial blasting agent) is used, and is detonated from a long distance away. Only the engine block is recovered. The explosion left a very clear crater.

On an episode of Wrecked - Life In The Crash Lane, O'Hare Towing responds to a call on a construction site to recover a mixer truck that had become stuck in mud, continuing to sink and threatening to roll over. After several unsuccessful attempts to hoist the mixer using a heavy rotator wrecker, the foreman informs the wrecker driver that the mixing drum contains approximately 5 cubic yards of concrete, and asks whether emptying the drum would lighten the truck enough to enable the wrecker to recover it. After emptying the drum, the wrecker operator is able to winch the mixer truck out of the mud & onto solid ground.

In season 5, episode 1 of TV series MacGyver, the series' main character uses an engine from a small portable gasoline powered concrete mixer, in order to build an aeroplane^[3]

In Fiction

• In Thomas and Friends, Patrick is a concrete mixer who is dark red and seen in On Site with Thomas before Jector in Thomas, Ten Cents and Jector.

• Bob the Builder - Dizzy is an orange industrial concrete mixer and Tumbler is a yellow and green concrete transport truck (commonly called a cement truck).

• Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen - a constructicon named Mixmaster disguises himself as a black & silver Mack concrete mixer. He and 5 other constructicons can combine together to form 1 giant robot named Devastator.

References

Mixer truck with attached pump and long–reach boom. Trailerable pumping rigs use hoses

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Cement mixers

1. ^ Hunker, Henry L. (2000). Columbus, Ohio: A Personal Geography. Ohio State University Press. pp. 196. ISBN 9780814208571. 
2. ^ Portland Cement Association: History of Ready Mixed Concrete industry site
3. ^ "MacGyver" Legend of the Holy Rose: Part 1 (1989)

External links

• Definition from dictionary.com
• Cement mixer production