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.