Rugged Connectivity in Hygienic Equipment
Whether you plan to use slip rings with mixers, fillers, conveyors or other food and beverage equipment subject to frequent washdowns, corrosion resistance is no doubt among your top considerations when specifying your slip ring unit. Simply put, a slip ring that is not constructed for harsh environments will affect lifetime, cleanliness and your system’s ultimate productivity. This blog post will highlight the key features to look for in slip rings that can withstand harsh and wet environments, while presenting examples from Orbex Group’s wide range of slip ring products.
When adding a slip ring to your food or beverage manufacturing design, several considerations are particularly important. They include:
- Stainless steel construction. Easy to clean and sanitize, stainless steel stands up to moisture, chemicals and acidic food substances while also being resistant to wear, making it particularly well-suited for food and beverage machinery.
- IP65-rated. The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC)’s IP rating indicates a device’s resistance to dust and water. The first digit, 6, indicates that the device is dust-tight. The second digit, 5, means it is protected against water jets. Orbex Group’s 200, 300 and 500 Series slip rings are available with IP65 options.
- Through-bore options. There are situations where an open center (or through-hole) design is required, such as when cables must pass through the device while still allowing full 360-degree rotation, or when pipes carrying fluids or pneumatics need to run through the center. Through-bore slip rings also tend to offer exceptional space savings.
- Modular circuit counts. Whether to allow a scalable number of circuits or the ability to mix power, signal and data in one device, modular circuit counts offer engineers high flexibility when designing food and beverage equipment.
- Contact forces. In wear-inducing applications like food and beverage, it is important to have a means of reducing contact pressure between the brush and the ring. Orbex’s innovative channeled brush technology, for instance, utilizes brush bundles that have multiple contact points to reduce contact force at any single point.
Choose Rugged, Reliable Slip Rings for Harsh Environments
Slip rings from Orbex offer several benefits that will protect and ensure your food and beverage equipment operate reliably. Here are some of our product highlights:
- 200 Series. Made from stainless steel to resist corrosion in food processing or other washdown environments, these slip rings operate over a wide temperature range of -40 to +80°C, with select units up to +85°C. They feature Orbex channeled brush technology, which creates multiple contact points and reduces contact forces for greater wear resistance and reliability. With up to 80,000 revolutions, the 200 Series offers excellent service life.
- Custom slip rings. We also specialize in tailor-made slip rings that accommodate a host of special requirements in food processing applications, including special through-hole sizes, custom circuit counts or mixes as well as custom cables and connectors or extended temperatures.
When you come to Orbex Group with your food and beverage application requirements, our technical experts will be ready to help recommend a standard or custom unit that will perform as intended in its challenging environment.
For more information, visit our harsh-environment slip rings page and our stainless steel washdown through-hole slip rings page.
