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Magnetic equipment is a mainstay in several processing industries—especially food, minerals, and recycling. These versatile machines can improve the safety and quality of a product. The most common varieties used in processing factories are lifts, separators, and coolant filters. All three are utilized in areas where removing metal particles would otherwise be too difficult to accomplish. While most of these devices use extremely powerful electromagnets, some also feature backup permanent magnets designed for safety contingency.
Lifts are pieces of magnetic equipment that are used for transporting large amounts of metal. This is extremely handy in the recycling industry, where crane-suspended lifts transport scrap onto recycling belts. They can also function as capable separators, fishing out ferrous materials from bulk scrap. This ensures the quality of the recycled metal by preventing any impurities from marring its structural integrity. It also prevents nonferrous materials from damaging machinery.
These devices typically use a powerful electric attractor to catch metals. Meanwhile, most are also fitted with a permanent magnet made from rare earth metals that prevent accidents in the case of power failure. Other industries that use them are construction, steel or iron production, and shipyards.
Purity is extremely important in these fields because any imperfections can cause major health hazards. Magnetic equipment is used in food and medicine processing to take out tramp iron or heavy metals before they contaminate these products. Separators are most commonly used in these facilities. Bullet separators are placed in gravity-fed chutes or pipelines. Rare earth devices, usually made form strontium ferrite, are placed in the path of material flow. As the material races past, the strontium ferrite removes ferrous particles from the product.
Tube and grid devices are also common fixtures in the food and medicine processing industries. When running material through a tube-shaped device, ceramic or rare earth attractors pick up impurities and separate them. Grid (or grate) attractors are perfect for food processing because they operate with a greater surface area. As the grain or other material spills through the grate, ceramic or rare earth devices built into the grate quickly snatch up any ferrous impurities.
Continuous ferrous extraction is an issue for magnetic equipment, which can occasionally be overwhelmed by the amount of material being removed. To counteract this, some devices come with replaceable head pulleys that increase the surface area of the attractor several times over.
Coolant filters are most often utilized in factories that shape metal. During the shaping process, cutting tools require a constant feed of coolant liquids to prevent overheating. Naturally, these liquids pick up small particles that get swept into the coolant stream. This can cause the shaping machine to malfunction.
To prevent metal buildup from contaminating the coolant reservoir, magnetic equipment is used to remove this material. This is usually done with a drum-fed machine fitted with several attracting wheels. Eventually, the removed metals get “caked” on the wheels, obstructing coolant flow. Most machines are automated to detect this and operate a set of scrapers that slough off the waste metal.
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