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Quality industrial weighing equipment is important for a wide variety of applications in the food and beverage industry. While many of these applications call for higher precision, these scales also need to have certain protection measures in place to ensure day-to-day safety for the technicians who are maintaining them.
As you can imagine, the food industry has extreme but necessary hygienic standards that require frequent cleaning of equipment. The scales being used must be washed many times a day to avoid contamination. The same is true of pharmaceutical and medical environments, which need washed down to maintain clean and sterile rooms. The washdown process of a floor scale can be tedious and time-consuming, which is why a close look at the process is essential.
HOW MUCH YOUR SCALE CAN HANDLE
Your scale's Ingress Protection (IP) rating is key since it will tell you exactly what it will protect against. An IP rating is used to define the levels of sealing effectiveness against moisture, dirt and other foreign bodies on electrical enclosures. These ratings will specifically indicate how much resistance there is to water and water pressure, which makes scales with a higher IP rating ideal for washdown environments. They are available as bench, floor and retail scales.
When scales require frequent cleaning there is also a lot of handling of the scale itself. Regardless of what type of scale (floor scale in a pit, above ground, or axle weighing scales), all should be frequently maintained by going through a thorough washdown and cleanout process, especially any scales that are weighing food. Maintaining hygiene and compliance is crucial to day-to-day efficiency when producing high quality products.
THE WASHDOWN PROCESS FOR A FLOOR SCALE IN A PIT
As many processes and technologies have evolved through the years, maintaining scales is no different. Servicing and cleaning floor scales the traditional way no longer works for creating an efficient and safe environment for technicians. The traditional method consisted of a thick piece of tread plate welded to structural channel that needed lifted to clean underneath, which was not an easy task. Before, a technician had to lift the scale every time to get a thorough cleaning. In fact, the technician would many times need a crane to lift the entire scale out of the pit.
This is also a safety concern because the technician would have to clean under the scale while it was hanging above. If the load weighments consisted of food products, the technician would have to clean and sanitize on a regular schedule meaning this process would need to be completed as regularly as once a month.
ACCURATE SCALE COMPANY NEEDED A VERSATILE SOLUTION
"“We got the Lift Deck Scale not only because of the quality, but we also got it for its versatility," Dean Ciluffo, owner and president of Accurate Scale Company, said. “Back in the day, it was a lot of work to wash a scale, and we definitely needed something more convenient." "
Ciluffo said the convenience comes from the ability to wash down into the pit. He also said how the maintenance of the Lift Deck Scale is ideal, as the electronics are sealed.
Embracing the new design will help your scale technicians to be more productive. The Lift Deck Scale is an opportunity to bring a safer and more convenient solution to your work environment. Every type of scale needs maintained, and the weighing industry is taking strides to revolutionize itself in that area.
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