Food safe Cam Followers Substitue Stainless Steel in Food Processing

Food and beverage machinery is not always the most hospitable place for motion components such as rollers, gears and sprockets. These machines tend to inflict thermal, chemical and moisture damage that can cause many polymer components to fail prematurely. Metal components have problems of their own, in the form of corrosion or excessive wear.

Power-Core™, our cast polymer, works well in these demanding food and beverage applications for two very good reasons:

• Power-Core tolerates washdown. Power-Core’s inherent chemical resistance and high-temperature performance and Chemical Resistance allow the material to withstand aggressive washdown regimens. But it has another property that sets it apart from other engineering polymers that might seem appropriate for washdown environments: Unlike Nylon 6 and other commonly used engineering polymers, Power-Core does not absorb moisture. So Power-Core components won’t swell or lose their tensile properties in response to food and beverage cleaning practices.

• Power-Core eliminates lubrication. Lots of applications can benefit from lubrication elimination, but few of them more so than food and beverage machines. Power-Core components require no lubrication whatsoever, which completely eliminates a potential source of contamination from food and beverage lines. Even without lubricant, Power-Core both resists wear and prevents metal-on-metal wear when used in conjunction with steel components. Stopping metal on metal wear eliminates the potential for metal particle contamination.

These two key advantages aren’t the only things Power-Core has going for it. Compared to metals, Power-Core offers cost, mass/inertia reduction and vibration damping capabilities that can benefit any moving machinery application with high-cycle requirements—including those for food and beverage.

To read more about Washdown safe plastics from Intech Power-Core download our Food  Engineering Casestudy: