Scales for Washdown & Food Processing

Maintenance and Inspections are Important

There are many factors that contribute to any production equipment being able to be operated safely and hygienically in the harsh environment that commercialized food processing requires today.

There are many different hydrostatic loadcells that can be used to help maintain proper weighing accuracies over many years when compared to electronic load sensing solutions. Despite being durable and reliable for many years, any mechanical system will require maintenance eventually to keep performing properly.

This cell has a rubber boot that is designed to keep food particles from building up in the mechanism that allows for the misalignment from the mixing machine and lets the cell dampen the vibration using a rocking column.  The rubber boot had worn and failed after nearly 8 years of service.  Replacement is simple and inexpensive (compared to replacement of an electronic load cell)  This customer manufactures various deli type salads (egg salad, potato salad, tuna salad etc.)  

Once the rubber cover was removed you can see that the rocker pin had been heavily worn on one side and would require replacement.  This again is a very small cost compared to having to replace an entire electronic load sensor.  Once the boot and rocker pin have been replaced this load sensor is ready for another 8+ years of reliable service.

Here you can see a fresh rocker pin is ready for food safe grease and a new loadcell boot to be installed.

Besides an obvious visual tear in the boot you can see some less obvious things like the hydrostatic load cell boot bulging outward.  This occurs when washdown water becoming trapped and actually pressurizing the inside of the hydrostatic load cell boot.  This indicates that the boot is not properly sealing and still trapping potential contaminates inside of the hydrostatic load cell in-between sanitation cycles.

Since these machines have powerful mixing motors and blades inside of the tanks it is important that the load sensors are properly inspected and maintained to be able to provide the best weighing accuracy over the lifetime of the device.

Please contact us for an estimate to calibrate or repair your scales today!