Revolutionize Your Seismic Protection Approach with Ball-N-Cone™ Isolators
Original Ball-N-Cone™ Isolator
Our patented Ball-N-Cone™ rolling isolation technology is at the heart of our industry-leading and patented seismic isolation product offerings. As we know, the most difficult task in product design is creating a simple yet functional product. It is much easier to add complexity and cost to a design. Our award-winning Ball-N-Cone™ isolator is an example of “simple elegance” in both product design and function.
Ball-N-Cone™ isolators utilize two matching conical-shaped load plates with a steel ball bearing sandwiched between them. They are used in various forms and sizes within our entire isolation product catalog.
The Ball-N-Cone™ load plates feature a gravity-restoring design. This allows the ball bearing to travel up the slope of the lower load plate. The upper load plate then travels over the ball. This effectively doubles the displacement capacity of the bearing. The designed slope of the load plate allows the bearing to use gravity as a restoring force and re-centers itself when the shaking intensity decreases or stops.
This unique re-centering ability of the Ball-N-Cone™ seismic base isolator is a critical feature when compared to other sliding-type isolators which have no restoring capability. Imagine a critical server rack on an inferior isolator moving several feet away from its original location, which would mean a loss of power and network connections.
The evolution of Ball-N-Cone™ is impressive. Our original seismic base isolator performed successfully through thousands of earthquakes worldwide. However, we created a new design to facilitate both larger displacement capacity and weight load requirements of equipment being isolated.
Introducing: NextGen Ball-N-Cone™ Isolators
After the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011, our engineers realized the need to increase the displacement capacity of the original Ball-N-Cone™ isolator. Increased displacement is critical in areas of higher seismicity and acceleration. Additionally, new research on rolling isolation systems and seismic technologies helped us reshape the load plates to a new design. This new design eliminates most centripetal accelerations. Centripetal accelerations cause vertical vibrations. Our new load plate design offers better protection for critical and sensitive equipment.
There are two unique and compact sizes of our Ball-N-Cone™ Isolators. The ISO-Base™ system uses our standard 9″ dish in either steel or QuakeCoated™. The OCTO-Base™ Modular Platform System, our ISO-Dynamic™ raised access flooring, and our AISLE-Base Isolated Containment System all utilize 14” isolators within a 15” octagonal frame. This provides an increase of 70% in displacement capacity over standard Ball-N-Cone™ isolators. This new design triples the weight load capacity of the original isolator to 2,500 lbs per dish. Additionally, the NextGen™ isolators maintain a compact 3.5” overall height.
