In the world of commercial baking, maintaining equipment is critical to success. Despite the plethora of maintenance resources available online, one crucial aspect often overlooked is the integrity of seals on industrial-grade mixers and blenders.
You can adhere meticulously to the maintenance instructions for your batch mixer and still run into issues like costly spillage of dough and other mixed ingredients. To remedy this, commercial bakeries are turning to advanced sanitary rotary shaft seals by CinchSeal.
By spinning seamlessly along with the shaft, rotary shaft seals:
- Preserve product integrity
- Eliminate wasteful spillage
- Prevent safety hazards caused by leaks
- Prevent gearbox failure
- Minimize costly maintenance and worn shaft replacement
- Stop product contamination
- Cut down on time-consuming housekeeping and cleaning
Bakers still using old sealing methods like rope packing and lip seals can tell you, issues like frequent maintenance, expensive sleeves to protect the spinning shaft, and hours of housekeeping are issues they’d gladly leave behind. Now thanks to split sanitary rotary shaft seals, they finally can.
A story with a happy ending
A few years ago, one of the largest bread and cake manufacturers in the United States had a slurry seal problem that was slowing production and eating into profits. The issue was leakage from the slurry mixers resulting from poorly performing seals.
The consequences of the seal leakage included:
- Gearbox failure and the cost of frequent oil changes and replacement
- Large-scale product loss
- Safety concerns
- Challenges to adequate housekeeping
- Buying expensive sleeves to protect shafts
- Costs in time and money for maintaining packing
The solution was the CinchSeal Cartridge seal designed to fit the slurry mixer’s bolting pattern. Once installed, the Cartridge seal completely eliminated:
- Gearbox failure
- Protective sleeve expenses
- Product loss
- Unscheduled downtime
- Oil changes
- Safety and housekeeping problems caused by the leakage
How CinchSeal Cartridge seals work
In the case of the large bread and cake manufacturer whose story has been told here, CinchSeal Cartridge seals replaced stuffing boxes with an air-purged seal. The air purge feature is made possible by drilling and tapping the CEMA adapter housing for standard pipe thread.
Cartridge seals were initially designed specifically to take the place of lip seals on Dodge and Falk screw conveyor drive adapter plates. They replace packing on rotary air locks and are made to operate at temperatures up to 200˚F (93.3˚C).
Today, CinchSeal Cartridge seals are designed to accommodate the screw conveyor drive end. They can be mounted easily on the conveyor adapter plate.
Why CinchSeal Cartridge seals?
The simple answer is “innovative design.” These Cartridge seals offer the designed-in benefits of all CinchSeal rotary shaft seals, including:
- Eliminating material leakage with an FDA-approved silicon elastomer that also moves with the shaft, preventing damage from friction and cutting costs for maintenance and replacement
- Sealing any leak paths with rotor cups that compress against stationary faces with optimal load, thus adding to the effectiveness of the silicon elastomer
- Purging with air or nitrogen to create higher pressure inside than outside the seal, allowing the seals to do their job even under high pressure Air or nitrogen purging resulting in higher pressure inside the seal than outside
- Reducing the potential for leakage even farther with a large shaft/seal interface surface
All these factors and more work together to provide cake and bread manufacturers, other commercial bakeries and the food processing industry as a whole with reliable, low-maintenance, cost-saving shaft seal solutions.
Some final thoughts on Cartridge seals
When confronted with leakage problems—or, preferably, before these issues arise—cake manufacturers and other food processors who use slurry mixers should consider:
- How much it costs to maintain and replace parts damaged by leaky seals
- The potential costs of product contamination and harm to employees caused by material leakage and mechanical failure
- The relative ease of replacing old seals with CinchSeal Cartridge seals and the long-term savings that can be achieved.
Since 1994, CinchSeal has been a major manufacturer or rotary shaft seals for screw conveyors, ribbon blenders and all kinds of bulk handling equipment. CinchSeal products service as replacements and major upgrades that make the need for machine replacement less likely.
More information on industrial bakery mixer seals is available by contacting CinchSeal. Quotes for slurry cartridge seals are guaranteed to be available in 24 hours. Custom engineering usually takes 10 days.
