When selecting or retrofitting your mixer, it’s important not to forget about one of the more critical parts your mixer needs: a strong seal between your cover and mixer.
While tape gaskets and O-ring gaskets are both used as seal options between a cover and mixer, only O-ring gaskets offer the minimal leak barrier required to prevent product loss, minimize waste and avoid clean up costs. But how exactly?
Bill Noonan, Senior Application Engineer at Marion Process Solutions, says there are four main reasons that make O-ring gaskets the better seal option for your mixer.
1. Keeps Your Valuable Ingredients Protected Inside Your Mixer
“Covers with a tight seal help keep your ingredients safe inside your mixer while protecting your batch from the things you don’t want inside,” Noonan says.
Unlike tape gaskets with a weak seal, O-ring gaskets with the right durometer can prevent unwanted materials from entering your mixer, such as moisture and other airborne material that can damage your batch.
The tight seal that O-ring gaskets offer also helps keep your ingredients where they’re meant to be – inside your mixer.
2. Preserves Worker Safety and Cleanliness of Your Facility
According to Noonan, tape gaskets are susceptible to major leakage, which only adds to cleaning costs and increases the potential of creating hazardous environments.
With O-ring gaskets, you can keep your ingredients and harmful dust pollution from leaking out, helping you avoid creating a mess around your mixer and slip-hazards on the floors of your facility.
When considering the right seal option, you want to choose one that keeps your workers safe and your facility clean. That’s what makes O-ring gaskets the ideal choice.
3. Reduces Your Maintenance Time with Easy Cleaning and Replacement
When tape gaskets are replaced, it creates debris that can compromise the cleanliness of your mixer and facility. Tape gaskets also need to be manually scraped off, which is time consuming and can increase the risk of operator injury.
With O-ring gaskets, you don’t have to struggle with this problem.
“Instead of stopping your production, wasting time cleaning or replacing tape gaskets, and risking the safety of your workers, you can switch out O-ring gaskets quickly and easily – and as often as needed,” Noonan said.
O-ring gaskets can be safely replaced in as quickly as two minutes, which reduces maintenance time between mixing campaigns. You can further increase your productivity with an available supply of O-ring gaskets kept in rotation in a cycle of cleaning, drying and in-use.
4. Offers You a Longer Service Life for Additional Savings
Unlike O-ring gaskets, tape gaskets are far more prone to wear and tear. As a result, tape gaskets need to be closely monitored and replaced frequently, which adds to maintenance complexity, wastes production time and adds to the total cost of choosing tape gaskets as your sealing option.
With O-ring gaskets, you can expect to have a long-lasting seal that can actually reduce your operational costs.
“Due to its design, O-ring gaskets will last you much longer while also maintaining its strength and sealing capability,” Noonan said. “You can’t say the same for tape gaskets.”
Considering the benefits of O-ring gaskets and the drawbacks of tape gaskets, there’s really little argument as to which seal is the best choice for your mixer.
When you use O-ring gaskets between your cover and mixer, you can feel confident knowing you’re protecting the integrity of your ingredients, the cleanliness of your facility, and the safety of your workers.
Want to learn more about how O-ring gaskets offer a stronger, longer lasting seal for your mixer?
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