Ingredient Supplier Ups Capacity, Quality with Bag Dump Screening Station

Caravan Ingredients, a leading manufacturer of food emulsifiers and the largest U.S. supplier of functional ingredients to the wholesale baking industry, built a new bag dump station equipped with a low-profile vibratory screener to boost capacity and product quality.

At the company’s Kansas City plant, one operator was responsible for slicing and dumping bags of flour, sugar, and other raw ingredients into a 3×5-ft-square-screen bag dump station, a process that generated dust, accumulated material on the internal edges of the station, incurred downtime for maintenance, and occasionally allowed bag scraps to enter the batch. Access to the dumping area was only large enough for one operator, limiting the output
of the entire process.

Caravan Ingredients overcame these limitations by fabricating a 304-stainless-steel platform table 80 in. wide, 68 in. long, and 32 in. high that allows two operators to simultaneously empty bags into a 60-in.-diam low-profile vibratory screener from Kason Corp., Millburn, NJ. The waist-high table
permits enough room for two operators to slice open and empty bags into the screener, thereby doubling capacity. On-size particles pass through the screen at high rates in a vertical straight-through pathway. Gravity discharges the particles through the screener outlet into mixers on the floor below.

Product quality improves as the screener separates powders of uniform size and free of lumps and/or paper scraps from cut bags.

Dust-collection devices built into the stainless-steel table create a clean work environment during bag dumping. A center-hinged lid remains open as bags are dumped, then shuts while the screener completes its cycle. Caravan Ingredients also designed its own dust-collection system located at the rear of the unit to collect airborne dust. The round design of the vibratory screener obviates the flanges and corners of the previous bag dump station that accumulated material, which reduces maintenance.

Low-Profile Screener Reduces Dumping Height

At half the height of a conventional vibratory screener, the low-profile Flo-Thru Vibroscreen screener decreases the height to which bags must be lifted by operators, which significantly reduces fatigue. Unlike conventional screeners, which have one imbalanced-weight gyratory motor located beneath the screening chamber, this unit has two imbalanced-weight gyratory motors mounted externally on opposite sides of the screening chamber. This configuration significantly reduces the profile of the screener and the minimum height of the bag dump table.

The screener imparts multiplane, inertial vibration that causes particles to pass through apertures in the screen. To prevent screen blinding, a 2-in.-high ball-tray anti-blinding device utilizes the screener's vibratory action to bounce elastomeric balls between the upper “working screen” and a lower “ball screen,” effectively dislodging particles from apertures in the upper screen.

Bag scraps and other oversize particles prevented from entering the material stream are vacuumed from the screening chamber between production runs.

Caravan Ingredients built seven such bag dump tables, the first in 1998. Michelle Schlie, project manager, says the bag dump tables have become an integral part of the company’s total productive maintenance philosophy, providing a “cleaner, safer, and reduced-maintenance environment.”

For more information contact Kason Corp. at 973-467-8140 or www.kason.com.