Drum motor is self contained for food safety

Due to the risk of contamination, food companies are demanding more self contained equipment such as motors, that can also stand up to harsh cleaning chemicals and resist corrosion.

The Van der Graaf motors' shell, shafts and end flanges are made stainless steel. Each motor is filled with food grade oil and hermetically sealed, making them suitable for applications requiring daily high-pressure washdown and acid or alkaline power washings.

The drives have sprockets for driving food industry plastic modular segmented belting conveyers. The sprockets, mounted onto the drum motor, mate with and drive the belting.

Segmented belting is widely used in a variety of food applications, such as dairy, meat, poultry and seafood processing, among others.

The sprocketed drives are custom manufactured in-house for each application and belt design. Van der Graaf is offering sprockets for most paters and designs of commercially available belting.

Installation of the conveyor drive units is quick and easy requiring less than half the time needed to install conventional exposed drives, the company claims.

The motor's compact and low profile design eliminates all external parts, such as motors, gearboxes, chains or belts, pillow block bearings and associated guards. The lack of external parts helps to increase operator safety, the company claims.

The internal gears are made of high alloy steel with honed teeth -- reducing noise levels to lower than US occuptional health safety requirements. The inverter duty motors run at 96 per cent efficiency, saving up to 30 percent on power consumption when compared to external drives, the company claims.

The engine requires an oil change every 50,000 hours.