Bell Ringing Equipment
Many churches and parishes have bells they are unable to ring. Cast bronze bells represented a tremendous investment when they were originally installed, and are a real treasure today. Our automation products will breathe new life into your bell tower.
Our automatic bell ringing equipment is based on our popular Millennium Carillon platform. All automation products are compatible with the enhanced features that our Windows based Millennium Suite provides. Any number of bells can be suitably actuated by electromechanical hammers, clappers, pneumatic clavier action or swinging bell motors.
Controllers
The Millennium Carillon features the optional capability of automating up to six tower bells with any combination of swinging motors or strikers. Music plays from the electronic carillon, and liturgical (swings, peals, tolls and Angelus) and clock striking functions ring on your real bells. The best of both worlds integrated into one unit!
Bell control systems for cast bell chimes or carillons feature music libraries for all seasons. More than one hundred musical selections are available for eight bells, to more than 600 selections for two octaves of bells.
User programmable swinging bell simulation for stationary bells has an adjustable tempo and back swing timing for each bell. Other ringing features include prayer and angelus bells, Mass bells, festive pealing bells, funeral tolls and flexible clock striking.
Switching Panels
Standard category-5 wiring links the bell relay switching panel to the controller. Optional connections use optical fiber or RF wireless data transmission. The switching panels are located close to the bells and clocks. The panels contain microprocessor decoding circuits and reliable hardware timers to precisely control pulse width timing to prevent premature failures of clappers and hammers.
We design and build all of our electrical equipment here in the United States with North American electrical codes in mind. Imported equipment designed for other electrical standards will switch only one leg of 240V circuits creating fire and shock hazards. Beware also of solid state switching which can fail in a shorted condition, never turn completely off and leak lethal levels of current. Our standard outputs are dry contacts in socketed relays.
Actuators
Our electromagnetic clappers and hammers are made in Holland by Royal Eijsbouts. Swinging bell motors are from domestic manufacturers and mated to Chime Master designed control electronics. IntelliSwing motors have frictionless optical rotation sensors and an angle adjustment to set how high the bells swing.
Our pneumatic system (shown below) can be fitted to existing carillon claviers and chime stands. Using an existing manual action for automation simplifies maintenance and can potentially extend the life of instruments that are infrequently played.
Tubular Tower Chimes
We have developed a complete ringing solution for tubular tower chime instruments. This new system rings the bells with a pneumatic linear ram and sostenuto control system, resulting in a sound consistent with the original electric action. We recently finished installing this new action on a beautiful 30-bell J. C. Deagan harmonically-tuned Tower Chime at the First Christian Church in Des Moines, Iowa.
The new action is controlled by our Millennium bell controller that provides scheduled automatic play, the ability to record thousands of additional musical selections, and comprehensive programming using the Millennium Suite software package. The bells may be played from either a 5th floor study while listening to the actual bells, or the sanctuary using our proprietary audio system. The bells are electronically reproduced in the sanctuary either alone (for rehearsal or recording) or in tandem with the tower bells. The sostenuto control provided in the tower is also electronically replicated in the sanctuary so the performer hears exactly how the bells will sound from the tower.
First Christian's treasured bells rang again on Christmas Eve, 2010, after more than 20 years of silence. Senior Minister Tim Diebel and Organist Carl Staplin allowed us to video their first impressions. The system plays four hymns at 10 AM, 1PM and 5PM Monday through Saturday in addition to ringing the time on the hour and half hour during the day.
