Posted by Karl Seidel on Tue, Jun 22, 2010 @ 01:51 PM
A lot of companies talk to their customers. Some talk at their customers. We like to listen to our customers.
Here’s what you told us you want from a conveyor system:
Speed is good, but not so much speed that you turn the product into mush or a mountain of crumbs.
Gentler is better: The gentler the ride, the less breakage and waste, the better for our bottom line.
Cleanliness is next to godliness and one step ahead of the inspector. Make conveyors simple to clean and give us lots of access points, you all said. That helps us stay compliant with regulatory requirements and makes our jobs easier.
Make maintenance manageable. The simpler the system, the less maintenance it requires, the more time we spend conveying nuts or coffee or teas and adding value to the company.
Pneumatics are noisy - and so are vacuums. A food processing plant can be a noisy place; anything that reduces the noise helps us keep our hearing and minimizes compensation claims.
Price is important, but value is more important. It’s not that cost isn’t a concern, of course it is. But, if the cost of waste and breakage, maintenance and cleaning, workmen’s comp claims, and regulatory citations exceeds the savings on a conveyor system, where’s the value in that?
By the time plant managers and plant engineers come to us, they’ve already gone from vacuums to pneumatics to bucket elevators and aeromechanical conveyors (and no doubt left a pile of sludge or buckets of broken product in their wake). So, naturally, they’re looking for a gentler ride with fewer broken nuts, fewer crushed tea leaves, and coffee beans that are whole and ready for market. That’s where tubular drag conveyors come in.
Learn more about tubular drag conveyors
Posted by Karl Seidel on Tue, May 18, 2010 @ 07:41 PM
The right conveyor keeps profits from crumbling along the production line
People like their Rice Krispies crisp, their Frosted Flakes flaky, and where would Cap’n Crunch be without his signature crunch?
For cereal manufacturers, coffee bean and tea purveyors, and dozens of other food makers, keeping their food products whole and free of outside contaminants during the manufacturing process is critical.
Plant managers and plant engineers know that how their product is conveyed during that process plays an important role in ensuring minimum waste as raw goods are transformed into finished products ready for market.
There are a number of options—bucket elevators, vacuum conveyors, chain conveyors, pneumatic conveyors, and augers—but one method, tubular drag conveyors, stands out as a top-shelf choice for keeping your foodstuffs, be they nuts or Nutri-Grain, even food for fish, whole, unblemished, and free of extraneous dust, pests, and errant paint chips falling from the plant ceiling.
More so than any of the alternatives, tubular drag conveyors move product gently through the plant.
Because they’re a closed system, nothing—not dust, dirt, or anything else you wouldn’t want a customer to find in their box of Cheerios—gets in. Still, the flexible design of tubular drag conveyors allows you to clean in place at multiple points along the way, saving you time and money. And, with sanitation requirements growing more stringent by the day, tubular drag conveyors improve compliance geometrically compared to say, an exposed bucket elevator or chain conveyor system.
Tubular drag conveyors from Cablevey are energy-efficient, using less than 5 horsepower maximum! Compared to pneumatic or auger systems, in fact, compared to any other system, they are quieter by design, easier on the ears, and better mitigate workman’s compensation claims from prolonged exposure to loud noise.
Nobody wants to see that lump of crumbs at the bottom of the cereal box, let alone rodent hair or even a hair pin from a food handler. Tubular drag conveyors help make sure your plant produces safe, clean food products with minimum waste and maximum efficiency.
Posted by Haig Simonian on Fri, Apr 30, 2010 @ 06:07 PM
1- Is it easy to maintain
2- How do you clean it?
3- How much does it cost to run?
4- Are your materials being handled so they won’t break?
5- Is dust contained?
6- Can you fix it yourself?
7- How noisy is it?
8- Is it energy-efficient?
9- Can you train someone else to use it, maintain it and clean it?
10- What is the percentage of materials broken while being conveyed?