Reach out for the stars (with 3D printed rocket engines).
Handling of larger amounts of Metal Powders in the aerospace industries
With the modular design of the Volkmann Vacuum Conveyors and Sieves they can be easily adapted to larger transfer rates, required either by a Multi-Machine layout with centralized powder handling or driven by substantially bigger printers.
The following article from Launcher USA and AMCM GmbH (an EOS Group company) highlights the use of Vacuum Conveyors, PowTReX sieving and powder recovery stations in such a case.
Click to the last page (101) in particular where Volkmann is mentioned twice
Vacuum conveyor with lifting and swiveling columns.
In many industries it is still common practice to fill filling systems, presses or containers by hand from above.
This process is usually unergonomic for employees and rather time-consuming. This procedure often harbors undreamt-of dangers, for example that of a dust explosion.
360 ° rotatable lifting column with vacuum conveyor
360 ° rotatable lifting column that simply brings the vacuum conveyor onto the machine
An alternative to automated filling are lifting and swiveling columns that are equipped with a vacuum conveyor for material transfer. The vacuum conveyor sits in a holding fork that is mounted on the lifting column and can be steplessly raised and lowered.
Would you like more information on the topic or do you have a process that you would like to make safer, more effective and more ergonomic? Our application experts will be happy to help you. >> Contact
Bread crumbs are often used in the production of fish fingers and other fish dishes. The task was to empty the big bags filled with breadcrumbs and then to feed the breadcrumbs to the machines for further processing.
A cost-effective solution was sought in order to empty the big bags and continue to use the existing crane. The customer then preferred to use mini hoppers as emptying aids. These have a small overall height, are easy to handle and cleaning when changing products is easy. Big bag emptying and conveyance of breadcrumbs
The big bags are emptied and transported to the machines by four VS 250 vacuum conveyors. 12 tons of breadcrumbs are conveyed and processed every day.
Do you find the application interesting and would you like to find out more about the topic or do you have a specific task? Our application experts will be happy to help you. >> Contact
The coffee roastery client Martermühle: rates itself highly. “Fragrant, first-class, fresh coffee – this is our promise to you. We only purchase the best beans from suppliers we trust and from plantations we know.”
The coffee roastery Martermühle also has the same quality claim when new equipment should be planned and procured for the improvement of the work processes. A modern filling scale should be completed on a new transport and supply system for coffee beans. The amount of coffee beans processed daily totaled 500 kg – the restriction on best quality and small lots should guarantee a fresh coffee aroma.
Originally, coffee beans were poured in small amounts by hand from barrels into the collection hopper. The then placed filling unit fills doses of coffee in different retail containers and sealed and marked them. The process was improved to be more work ergonomic, cleaner and simpler but without taking away from the unique aroma of the coffee.
After test runs, it was decidedto use the Volkmann VS 200 LT vacuum conveyor. The slow transport provided by the exceptionally compact and quick and easy to clean Volkmann conveyor system proved less stressful to the comparatively sensitive coffee beans, and this was critical.
The extraction of material by the suction lance directly from the barrel now makes loading the filling scale operator friendly, quick and safe. The conveyor system can be easily taken apart and cleaned with minimal intervention and without tools for pending grade changes.
What our clients are saying today about the selected solution:
“For our employees, the work situation has been considerably simplified, and the design makes it possible to clean it quickly.“
Do you also have a process that you want to make safer, more efficient and more ergonomic? Our application experts will be happy to help you. >> Contact
The Production of care and hygiene products requires the transport and dosage of highly flammable resin granules in a mixer. Minimum ignition energy of the substance to be transported is 3 mJ (MIE 3 mJ).
In the previous procedure, drums were filled with resin and heated up in ovens; then the liquified resin was mixed with another liquid in a stirred vessel. This time-consuming and comparatively cumbersome to master process led to production bottlenecks.
The customer turned to us with its request for a safe, yet, at the same time, flexible work environment. In close consultation between the provider and the user, they agreed to design a flowing and space-saving process.
Big Bag Station
After the process conversion, the resin granulates will no longer be prepared in drums but rather in bulk bags. The material to be transported is now placed centrally and in the easily reachable material storage above two bulk bag unloading stations. Whereby the bulk bags are alternatingly unloaded and standstill times for container changes are avoided.
Two Volkmann Conweigh vacuum conveyors suck the material from here and transport it over 60 or 85 m distance and 12 m high to the stirred vessel with a conveyor capacity of 2 tons per hour.
The Conweigh systems ultimately supply 100 precisely measured grams of the transported material to the stirred vessel where it is heated and mixed with other liquids.
Conweigh-System
Now various flammable materials from the client can be safely transported with the selected system. Studies have shown that the suction lines can be almost completely emptied so that additional cleaning measures are not necessary in the case of pending material changes which contributes to the desired high flexibility in the system. The entire system is designed and made in conformity with ATEX.
The client chose the VOLKMANN solution for the new design of the process not least because of the close cooperation and competence specifically found in explosion risk prevention. The proposed solution also appeared attractive on account of the hygienic aspects and the operation and maintenance friendliness.Volkmann considers the user’s needs with knowledge and experience and therefore develops optimal results and processes.
Would you like to find out more or do you have a specific task? Our application experts will be happy to help you. >> Contact
Handling of critical and toxic powders – Containment.
The requirements and demands for suitable containment solutions have greatly increased in industry in recent years. For example, more potent and more effective active ingredients are constantly being produced in the pharmaceutical industry which require closed and dust-free processes. The handling of these dangerous substances demands a high level of safety to protect the employees, the product and the production environment. In the past, the employees had often been only equipped with a full-body protection suit and more or less worked in an open process. In doing so, the risk of contamination of the product and the work environment was very high. Today the process, depending on the application, is either integrated in an isolator (protective cover) or executed as a sealed and closed process facility to ensure a dust-free and safe work environment. Vacuum conveyor systems are especially suited for assignments in high containment due to the procedures in negative pressure ranges.
It Depends on the Product
The requirements for containment are always product specific and must therefore be redefined for every product. Internationally as well as in general use, the terms OEL level or OEB class are used. In the case of OEL (Occupational Exposure Level), the focus is on the maximum concentration levels permissible in a work environment. The specific OEL value and the product features (granule size and fluidity) play a significant role here in the design of the process unit. Not every containment system is suitable for every product.
Pressure from the Authorities
Other reasons for a growing demand of containment solutions are guidelines and regulations. The REACH Regulation established a chemical guideline for all of Europe that addresses a classification of hazardous and harmful substances. REACH stands for the Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals. The manufacturers of chemicals and the operations of processing plants are then obligated to disclose information about how hazardous or harmful a substance is and how the user should handle it in order to protect oneself.
In a high containment project, a closer and more open cooperation than usual between the company and users involved is required. For a pharmaceutical manufacturer in Switzerland, a PPC250 type vacuum conveyor was integrated in a special containment facility (Weiss Pharmatechnik GmbH) for the filling and transferring of high potency ingredients and various excipients. The objective of this project was to develop a closed facility concept that fulfils the required OEB class 4.
The transferring and filling facility essentially consists of a transfer compartment for the purpose of the products, an upstream material lock for the insertion of the container, a filling compartment with integrated PPC 250 as well as a container station with a docked double flap system for filling the containers with the product.
The containers with the ingredients are first positioned over a material lock in the transfer compartment. Using the integrated gloves in the transfer compartment, the operator opens the containers and, by means of a manual suction lance connected to the PPC 250, sucks the material found in the adjacent filling compartment. From here, the transferred ingredient is emptied into the docked container via the double flap. The container is situated on a weighing system to determine the required amounts. The emptied containers are fed through the side walls via foil ports.
The harmless pharmaceutical excipients are sucked in through a second suction lance directly from the supply container outside the unit. The entire containment system fulfilled the required OEB 4 demands during the filling and the subsequent WIP cleaning and is suitable for dust-explosive powder (conforms to ATEX).
Design Limit 1 µg/m3 (OEB 5)
A classic application of vacuum conveyors in the pharmaceutical industry is the unloading of fluid bed granulators and the subsequent filling of a downstream sieve mill. One of our pharmaceutical clients asked if our PPC vacuum conveyor is suitable for a design limit of 1 μg/m3. In order to be able to form an idea of these minimal dust concentrations, you can use the following example: A small grain of commercial sugar that we use in our morning coffee weighs ca. 0.6 mg. The six-hundredth portion of this sugar grain is allowed to appear in one cubic meter of air within a maximum of 8 hours so that a risk for the employees does not exist.
It is not enough to be sealed
A sealed and closed process was required for this high containment assignment that should forgo the protective cover in the form of an isolator. In order to be able to fulfil these high demands, the hygienic PPC 350 vacuum conveyor that is free of dead space was further developed and augmented with a second filter level (HEPA H14) and suitable isolation valves.
However, to be sealed is only a requirement for a complete high containment system. A second essential feature is the cleanability of the entire surface in contact with the product including the ports to the other process facilities in the closed WIP (washing in place) procedure.
In the first cleaning step, the entire facility is flooded with water; this especially applies to the contaminated conveyor hoses and process lines. Wetting the surfaces that come into contact with the product first serves to pre-wash the separator tanks, filters and valves. Afterwards, the intensive cleaning begins with rotating nozzles and the repeated washing of the stainless-steel filter that is used as the primary filter here. The vacuum line after the primary filter and the second filter level (HEPA H14) could also be contaminated and is likewise cleaned. The WIP procedure executed here is very individual and depends strongly on the respective product, on the cleaning agents used and, of course, on the process.
Dust Emission Measurements as Proof
Which containment level a process facility now satisfies can only be proved with a measurement of the emitted particle. In a prepared clean room, the PPC350-CIP was tested under comparable conditions as in the later production. The test material used was a very fine-grained and dusty naproxen-lactose mixture that is very well suited for such tests and is frequently used. The test material was located in a transport vessel (IBC) that was docked through a double flap system on the feed hopper. The PPC350-CIP was mobile in a frame and likewise connected with an empty IBC by a double flap.
An expert team selected several statistically process relevant measuring points for the test and placed the permitted air sensors with test filters for these measuring sequences there. These primarily record the situation in the direct surroundings of the measurement points while the person-related measuring point displays the cumulative, average burden of the operating personnel. The operator supervised the process during the measuring and changed the filled and emptied IBCs here. The conveying process was performed three times for a representative result, and each individual process was measured separately. The measurement itself was completed by special compact filter systems that were perfused by a defined amount of air with the aid of a small vacuum generator.
The measurement of the particle concentration not only occurred during the conveyor process exclusively in the IBC change but also during the cleaning and the subsequent disassembly of the vacuum conveyor.
Conclusion:
The evaluation of the particle measurements in the laboratory yielded that the PPC350-CIP lay under the design limit of 1 μg/m3 in all three process steps and is therefore most suitable for this high containment application.
Would you like to find out more or do you have a specific task? Our application experts will be happy to help you. >> Contact
Drum emptying – remove bulk goods and powder from drums.
In some situations the pick-up of bulk product is from drums or barrels and depending on the product this can be easy or more difficult to do. Products flow easily or be strongly adhesive. We have developed various solutions to empty drums almost completely and without a lot of operator intervention.
The barrel is mounted in a holding station and is tipped by hand. To suck the product out of the barrel a suction lance is inserted from above. The drum emptying device is adapted to the product and the task situation. Drum emptying where a liner is present is then also possible.
As the product is sucked out of the drum by vacuum conveying, the suction lance sinks down into the drum under gravity and thus gradually empties the contents. The process is supported with a vibrator, which is attached to the station below the platform, in order to help extract difficult-to-flow products.
For products that tend to be very dusty or should be contained as much as possible, it is possible to mount a corresponding lid on the barrel. This is equipped with a ventilation filter and a sealing sleeve and thus prevents dust from escaping.
Would you like to find out more about barrel emptying or do you have a specific task? Our application experts will be happy to help you. >> Contact
It is often necessary to weigh and dose powder, amongst other bulk materials, into a process. Let’s take the addition of sugar into a mixer as an example from the food industry.
According to the recipe, a total of 150 kg of sugar must be added to the mixer. The conveyor system used requires ten conveying cycles of 15 kg each. Depending on the design of the system, delivery rates of up to 4 t / h are also possible. The accuracy of the system is 99 – 99.7% of the target weight to be achieved.
The removal from different pick-up locations is possible as well as the adjustment and storage of recipes. A quick intervention in the process is possible via the device control’s intuitive touch display. In addition, the entire process can of course also be controlled fully automatically.
The Volkmann CONWEIGH is a combined conveying and dosing system and is usually used for adding quantities from 2 kg upwards per unit.
Would you like to learn more about the topic or do you have a specific task? Our application experts will be happy to help you. >> Contact
Feed large quantities of bagged goods in to the process.
There are many processes in which bulk products need to be introduced in large quantities from sacks and bags. For example, in to a mixer or stirred tank, this is often the case in the food or chemical industries.
The sacks are loaded on to the conveyor belt which transports these to the loading station activated by a foot switch, where the sacks are then opened and emptied. A waste chute makes it possible to dispose of the empty bags laterally into a waste bag compactor.
To help reduce the dust inside while loading there is the option to either connect the product loading station up to a local extraction system or to have a dedicated vacuum conveyor for dust removal.
If the product tends to form lumps during storage, a lump breaker can be connected under the feed hopper. This crushes lumps up to about fist-sized lumps.
Would you like to learn more about the topic or do you have a specific task? Our application experts will be happy to help you. >> Contact
The correct handling of powders within the additive manufacturing industry.
Whether it is metals or plastics there are numerous different powder handling tasks to be solved within the Additive Manufacturing (AM) industry.
However, for various reasons, metal powders represent a greater challenge for powder handling. This involves the powder supply to the 3D printers the recovery of unbound material and its reclassification and recovery (recycling) for reuse.
With the Volkmann PowTReX, the combination of the process steps of vacuum conveying, controlled sieve dosing and ultrasonic screening represents a compact platform to solve these demanding tasks.
In connection with the correct container and container handling, safe, sealed and – if necessary – inert powder handling can be achieved. This means that not only stainless steel powders, also aluminum and other sensitive metal powders, for example, can be safely handled.
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