Mepaco’s Food Processing customers often opt for custom and modifiable dumping equipment features that provide the highest level of personnel and food safety, highlighted in this animation.
Locking Mechanism: Pallet Retention cylinders secure the pallet on both sides to retain its position during the dump cycle. The locking mechanism is part of the PRS (Pallet Retention System).
Personnel Guarding: In the animation, personnel guarding is demonstrated for the entire dump-zone footprint and includes safety relays that control the e-stop position.
Elevated Load Height: Whether it benefits production or personnel maneuverability, elevated load heights can be customized into the dumping equipment solution.
Pneumatic LRS (Liner Hold Down): A liner hold-down is controlled to enter the tote to prevent the liner from separating from the combo and falling into the hopper. The liner hold-down prevents operators from having to reach and try to control the liner by hand.
PRS (Pallet Retention System): The PRS design feature allows the combo to complete the dump cycle while separating from the pallet, limiting the potential for contamination in the food stream. Upon completion of the dump cycle, the dumper and frame are reunited, and the carriage assembly returns to the start-load position.
The Pallet Retention System (PRS) and the Liner Retention System (LRS) are both available on the DP3000 Pivot Dumper (shown in the animation) and the HD3000 High Lift Dumper models.
Other food and personnel safety options include:
Mepaco offers dumpers with a range of versatility from 48” to 175” dump heights. We also manufacture accessories including lifts, vats, tubs, and buggies for your material handling needs. The tote dumpers (DP3000, HD3000 and LD3000) have a working capacity of 3,000 lbs. (1,361 Kg) and a 45-degree dump angle.
Visit Mepaco’s Dumping Equipment for more information.
An equipment safety and sanitation audit can provide direction for implementing improvement procedures and specifying equipment updates that mitigate risk and solve for safety and production goals. Here’s an excerpt from our audit checklist:
Every food processor has their own unique food safety challenges. Here is one process room scenario where attention to process layout, equipment modifications and training can significantly reduce foreign material contamination.
The night shift has completed their work and the sanitation team begins flooding the process room with cleaning chemicals, water and spray to soak and sanitize every nook and cranny. And what often gets blasted away? The drain plug often goes missing. Sometimes the cleaning crew doesn’t even know it went down the drain. Sometimes the production staff starting up the next shift also doesn’t know it is missing.
Many food processing people have a similar story, so Mepaco invented a tool-less self-containing plug that is impossible to lose and easy to appreciate.
Mepaco’s plug ejects far enough to release the waste, but is restrained against a solid welded restrictive barrier that holds the plug in line, without limiting performance, or enabling escape.
Other plug designs don’t hold up to rigorous cleaning and aren’t designed to prevent the harboring of bacteria. While sanitation teams want easy to clean solutions that will pass inspection, production wants efficiency with no loss of product. Losing plugs are no longer a concern with these self-containing plugs.
Designed and manufactured by Mepaco, this pivot dumper has a high load infeed because of the dump elevation and limited ceiling height available at the customer’s food processing facility. This dumper features a pneumatic combo hold down, with options for additional sanitary surfaces to meet the demands of the caustic and aggressive cleaning procedures.
Due to the high load height, the pneumatic hold-down option allows the customer to use multiple combo/tote sizes in which their IQF (Individual Quick Frozen) products are supplied, without the need for manual adjustment. During the dumping process, the pneumatic hold-down prevents the combo and the liner from falling into the surge loader.
The customer opted for a stainless reservoir tank. Traditionally flat surfaces were redesigned with a pitch to allow water drainage. The top of the reservoir was also pitched to allow drainage.
The application called for all stainless steel piping and non-corroding fittings with a minimum amount of flexible hoses. These upgrades shorten the time to clean equipment between recipe production changes.
All product contact surfaces were electropolished for the greatest resistance to bacterial attachment and the most durable surface for caustic sanitation.
Visit Mepaco’s Dumper Equipment web page for more information and brochure.
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