Doser Product Improvement Request

[pigmo]

hi ghl,

the most frequent problem we get is the plastic blue "cap" that holds in place the rollers and tubing breaks. Over the past 2 or 3 years, we've had around 9 or 10 failures, spread across 3 ghl 2.1 dosers.

The caps break, most often at the top where they are screwed in -- sometimes the rollers get jammed with the tiny pieces, sometimes the tubing works its way out, but in any case that head stops working correctly. Our systems have had 3 or 4 mini-crashes due to this problem. Sometimes we're lucky and see it before the cap competely falls off, but mostly we don't catch it. And due to murphy's law, it always happens around vacation time. I would estimate each mini crashes cause us a livestock loss of around usd$4k each (we have around a 1,200 gallon system), so it is significant, and quite a headache, and causes a lot of swearing... especially if the point of failure costs less than $1.

can you make the caps stronger, out of a different polymer, or at the very least make the tabbing at the screws more robust? Here is an example of screw tabbing separation leading to internal plastic breakage and head jamming.

 

[CEReefer]

hi ghl,

the most frequent problem we get is the plastic blue "cap" that holds in place the rollers and tubing breaks. Over the past 2 or 3 years, we've had around 9 or 10 failures, spread across 3 ghl 2.1 dosers.

The caps break, most often at the top where they are screwed in -- sometimes the rollers get jammed with the tiny pieces, sometimes the tubing works its way out, but in any case that head stops working correctly. Our systems have had 3 or 4 mini-crashes due to this problem. Sometimes we're lucky and see it before the cap competely falls off, but mostly we don't catch it. And due to murphy's law, it always happens around vacation time. I would estimate each mini crashes cause us a livestock loss of around usd$4k each (we have around a 1,200 gallon system), so it is significant, and quite a headache, and causes a lot of swearing... especially if the point of failure costs less than $1.

can you make the caps stronger, out of a different polymer, or at the very least make the tabbing at the screws more robust? Here is an example of screw tabbing separation leading to internal plastic breakage and head jamming.

Tried to bring up the same issue for a while, but their answer was it needs frequent changes so it wouldn’t break

 

[slythy]

Might be able to 3d print one out of something stronger. I dont know what a good one looks like but it might be easy to reinforce it

 

[Member No 1]

I have (3) 2.1 dosers running, on one of the units I have (2) heads are dedicated to ATO, these have been in operation well over 2 years without issue.
One thing that might add to a premature failure is over tightening the screws. Just a thought.

 

[mlandscape]

That's what I was advised by GHL - Germany when I had a similar problem. Since not tightening as much on the two screws I can't recall having the problem again.