Background
Who could forget last December, when a U.S. mess hall in northern Iraq was cowardly bombed by a suicide attacker leaving 22 dead? The U.S. military didn't. That is why on January 7, Cyclonaire received a phone call from an Army testing facility in Mississippi. "There was a guy there who was searching the web and ran across our locomotive sanding machine," Joe Morris, vice president of sales and marketing for the company said. Morris said the military created the U.S. Army Rapid Equipping Force, because of cruel attacks like the one that occurred before Christmas last year. He said their mission is to "find and utilize solutions as fast as possible." In this case, the problem was not enough protection around mess halls. The solution was to be found at a state-of-the art company in Nebraska. The "equipping force" already had one portion of the "solution" in hand when Cyclonaire received the phone call from Mississippi, Morris said. It turns out a company in Indiana makes large "Lego-like" plastic blocks that could be "snapped" together to create "barriers" in the mess halls, he explained. The question was, "What should we fill them with?"
The Solution
"They found out the most efficient thing for stopping shrapnel is sand," Morris said. That's where Cyclonaire comes in. The company is an expert at creating pneumatic conveying systems that will move all sorts of bulk products. One of their systems was specifically designed to move sand to help trains run more smoothly. According to law, all locomotives for freight and passenger trains are required to carry sand, that is used for traction when the train accelerates or decelerates up a hill, when it's wet, icy or when breaking. Cyclonaire's "tracksider" product provides efficient "sanding stations" for locomotives. It uses a hopper with a pneumatic conveyor that delivers the sand to various filling hoses. Morris said what the military was looking for was a portable unit that could be easily moved in and out of mess halls, to fill plastic blocks, leave no "residue" behind and "get out of the way quickly." As a result, Cyclonaire came up with the only, "Army Unit Mobile Sander" in the world. It is an entirely, selfcontained, diesel-driven unit, mounted on a trailer and ready to be pulled by a military truck. It can convey sand at a rate of two and half tons per hour. Two, 100-foot hoses, run from the machine and will attach to the "plastic boxes" created by the company in Indiana. One hose conveys sand while the other sucks dust residue during operation.
The new technology will be operated by U.S. contractors in Iraq, because Morris said they want to use it "immediately" and it takes a lengthy period of time for the military to clear the use of new machinery in their operations. Morris said Cyclonaire is proud to use their pneumatic conveying expertise to create safety for those serving our nation in the War in Iraq.