Concrete mixers have created a world of solid knowledge

Richard Luxenburg is a professor of Architecture at Anne Arundel Community College in Annapolis, Maryland. He has produced some excellent presentations on concrete construction technology. Because we focus this blog on concrete mixers and cement mixing technology, we thought that this presentation by Mr. Luxenburg would be very educational. He has packed these slides full of great images and technical descriptions.

Cart-Away concrete mixer trailers are on YouTube

The standard contractor concrete mixer or homeowner cement mixer are very commonplace, but a 1-yard mixing trailer is very unique. The following top 5 videos on YouTube show that people love to show off the Cart-Away concrete mixing trailer.

 

Attempting alien space launch with a concrete mixer

Transfer from portable concrete mixer into a mixing trailer

Blowing up a cement mixer trailer to clean it out

Cart-Away concrete mixing trailer sales video

No wonder there is so much concrete mixing going on...

Every year the Mineral Information Institute delivers a baby... A mineral baby that is. The "baby" is the MII's way of demonstrating the demand for minerals in the United States. It is always amazing to us to realize the volume of materials it takes to maintain our society. When you consider these volumes you will quickly realize that concrete mixers of all sizes must really be working hard to feed the construction demands of this baby. One need only realize that every person in America requires almost 500-pounds of portland cement every day, just to feed our huge concrete appetite. If you thought that cement usage was a big number, take a look at our sand a gravel needs every day... 5,599 pounds of these aggregates end up being mixed for concrete projects everyday for each man, woman and child. These big numbers help us to better understand our dependence upon a good material supply chain that starts at mining and ends when the concrete is delivered to the forms by the mixer.

The rubble piles created by the 2010 Haiti earthquake tell a story of poorly produced concrete. The walls and the concrete slabs that crumbled and crushed thousands are the result of a failed mixing process. In the poorest nations of the world they use nothing more than a few shovels and a spot on the ground to create a cement mixer. This backbreaking effort, combined with the use of a poor recipe literally causes Haitians to work themselves to death. We believe that this action must stop if Haiti is to rebuild back better and produce safer structures . 

A standard concrete mix design is heavy

It is important to understand some rules of thumb when it comes to working with concrete. The first and most obvious concept in these "guesstimates" is that concrete is heavy. Standard concrete is created from rock, sand and cement, all of which are naturally heavy materials. There has been published rules of thumb for understanding the weight of concrete, but we wanted to do some checking of these numbers for ourselves.

Strong concrete needs evenly distributed cement.

Producing a strong concrete requires the appropriate blending of aggregates with Portland cement and water. With the correct recipe and a proper mixing process these material will conjoin into a “stew” that can harden into the most durable material on earth.

A 4.1 cubic foot cement mixer or a 1.94 cubic foot mixer?

There is misleading information that accompanies the sale of small cement mixers today. There are retailers that advertise large capacities in the bold headlines, and then they hide the real capacity from the buyer down in the spec sheet. It is only when you dig deeper that you will find the actual mixing capacity of their equipment. Obviously the marketing and sales departments of each manufacturer wants to show their product in the greatest light. They want you to believe that you can yield higher volumes of wet concrete and very high production rates per hour. Yet, we have discovered that the stated capacities differs greatly from actual mixing capacity and that hourly production calculations are nothing more than a sales pitch gone wrong.

Concrete Facts and Economic Strengths