text: Self-cleaning screen media was initially engineered to resolve screen cloth blinding, clogging and pegging problems. The idea was to place crimped wires side by side on a flat surface, creating openings and then, in some way, holding them together over the support bars (crown bars or bucker bars). This would allow the wires to be free to vibrate between the support bars, preventing blinding, clogging and pegging of the cloth. Initially, crimped longitudinal wires on self-cleaning cloth were held together over support bars with woven wire. In the 50s, some manufacturers started to cover the woven cross wires with caulking or rubber to prevent premature wear of the crimps (knuckles on woven wires).  One of the pioneer products in this category was ONDAP GOMME made by the French manufacturer Giron. During the mid 90s, Major Wire Industries Ltd., a Quebec manufacturer, developed a “hybrid” self-cleaning screen cloth called Flex-Mat, without woven cross wires. In this product, the crimped longitudinal wires are held in place by polyurethane strips. Rather than locking (impeding) vibration over the support bars due to woven cross wires, polyurethane strips reduce vibration of longitudinal wires over the support bars, thus allowing vibration from hook to hook. Major Wire quickly started to promote this product as a high-performance screen that helped producers screen more in-specification material for less cost and not simply a problem solver. They claimed that the independent vibrating wires helped produce more product compared to a woven wire cloth with the same opening (aperture) and wire diameter. This higher throughput would be a direct result of the higher vibration frequency of each independent wire of the screen cloth (calculated in hertz) compared to the shaker vibration (calculated in RPM), accelerating the stratification of the material bed. Another benefit that helped the throughput increase is that hybrid self-cleaning screen media offered a better open area percentage than woven wire screen media. Due to its flat surface (no knuckles), hybrid self-cleaning screen media can use a smaller wire diameter for the same aperture than woven wire and still lasts as long, resulting in a greater opening percentage.