Hygienic design principles and material selection are critical to actuator performance in food & beverage environments.
Food and beverage production on today’s industrial scale would not be possible without a high level of automation. Pneumatic, hydraulic and electric actuators are critical moving components in equipment used for processing and packaging both food and beverage products around the globe. In addition to efficient production, machines in these processes must keep food & beverage product safe by preventing bacteria, lubricating fluids or other contaminants that could harm consumers from contacting the product.
As a result of increased food safety regulations emphasizing the prevention of foodborne illnesses, the use of hygienic design principles in today’s food processing equipment has become critical. With mechanical actuators, the use of appropriate materials, methods of sealing and methods of construction are critical to eliminate collection points where bacteria can flourish and resist corrosion that could contaminate the processing environment. In addition, suitable actuators must protect against high pressure, high temperature wash-down procedures with a variety of sanitary cleaning solutions.
This paper will examine mechanical system (including actuators) hygienic design considerations that ensure performance in the challenging food and beverage processing environment and mitigate risks of contamination events.
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Miniature linear guides are indispensable in myriad motion designs. They impart precision and performance to machine axes in everything from semiconductor manufacture and test and measurement installations to packaging setups and even large industrial machinery. Chieftek Precision USA and Chieftek Precision Co. Ltd. (cpc) offers miniature linear guides for these precision applications and builds the guides to satisfy the design objective of high value.
When discussing a linear motion application, many first-time or beginning users will often ask us “How accurate is this actuator?” As you will see, the answer is way more involved than simply stating a number. To fully understand the answer, we need to help the user get to a basic understanding of the actuator specifications and to what the specifications are really referring. As illustrated below, you can see that, while related, accuracy and repeatability are not the same thing. Sometimes, repeatability is more important than overall accuracy; the relative importance of the two qualities depends on a thorough understanding of your application.
Some motion applications need axes to deliver both linear and rotary motion. Conventional designs for such functionality are often complicated and bulky. What’s more, rotary motors put to linear motion often have output shafts that are inadequate for supporting heavy side loads.
Bishop-Wisecarver understands the difficulties you may face when designing and building a machine. A properly selected product such as QuickTrak®, reduces design and installation costs by easily integrating into machine configurations and helping to eliminate or reduce manual processes resulting in time savings of approximately 50%.
Today we are seeing a major shift from pneumatic linear actuators to electromechanical systems. This is because of high maintenance requirements of pneumatic and hydraulic systems which results in long machine downtimes and lost productivity. But can electrical linear systems truly fill in as a perfect solution and replace pneumatic systems?
This paper examines the idea of design simplicity as it relates to compressors and vacuum pumps comparing and contrasting conventional design (i.e., motor-driven and diaphragm) with the linear motor free piston system design.
With advances in precision manufacturing and the advent of electronic preloading, the accuracy and performance of rack-and- pinion drives can match or exceed that offered by competing hardware – often with better durability, efficiency and economics. This paper outlines four key areas for comparing rack-and- pinion drives to linear motors and ball screws.
The primary function of a linear guide system is to enable an application payload to be easily moved in one linear direction (the linear guide system’s travel axis) while constraining motion in all other directions. Motion constraint is achieved through multiple points, lines, or planes of contact between a linear guide system’s mobile carriage guide elements and stationary track.