It is essential in many areas of industrial production to guarantee the purity of raw materials and end products. Expensive recalls, such as for contaminated food, can severely damage a company’s reputation and regularly show how important it is to identify foreign bodies as early as possible before they become a problem for production and packaging machines or even a risk to consumers.
Contamination frequently occurs in the form of chips and pieces of plastic or metal from the production equipment itself. In the event of problems, damaged parts or lost fasteners can enter into the production process.
To help prevent such instances, Berger Tools offer standard parts with materials that are easy to detect. The two available options are explained below.
Standard parts with visual detectability (VD)
Visually detectable standard parts are made of blue plastic. The blue colour makes them especially visible to the human eye and, perhaps more importantly, to optical monitoring systems. Especially in milk and meat products, but also in most other areas of food production, blue colours are rarely encountered and therefore stand out well.
Complete standard parts or pieces of them that mistakenly end up in the food production can then be easily and reliably detected. In addition, contaminants and residues of food on standard parts and operating elements are also easier to identify thanks to the colour contrast.
All visually detectable plastic standard parts are made of FDA compliant plastic granulate as per FDA CFR.21 and EU 10/2011 and can therefore be used safely in contact with food and in pharmaceutical production.
Standard parts with metal detectability (MD)
Metal detectable standard parts are made of blue plastics that contain additives such as iron oxide.
As a result, they are detected by metal detectors as of a particle volume of 0.125 cm³, meaning that even hidden plastic chips can be detected. The blue colour also improves visual detectability. It is always important to calibrate the metal detector since the products at risk of contamination and the moisture they contain can influence the detection performance.
The metal detectable plastic standard parts are also made of FDA compliant plastic granulate as per FDA CFR.21 and EU 10/2011 and can therefore be used safely in contact with food and in pharmaceutical production.