The applications for hygienic and corrosion resistant stainless steels and aluminium in the
packaging industry are vast – including shrink wrappers, case packing, palletising, filling,
labelling and conveying systems – using products such as:
- Stainless steel flat products (sheet and plate) – equipment bodies and frames, base
plates and stiffeners - Round bar – guard rails, bearings and guides
- Flat bar – guides and stoppers
- Square bar – mostly for keyways
- Hygienic tube and fittings – lines which convey food products
- Aluminium tube – rollers (fruit industry)
Using good quality stainless steel from reputable mills for the fabrication and operation of
packaging equipment delivers significant benefits, including saving time and reducing scrap.
Heinrich Vollgraaff, Sales Manager for NDE Stainless Steel – Cape, explains some of the
pitfalls of low quality stainless steel use in the packaging industry.
“Stainless steel from less reputable mills may be sub-standard which could cause
consistency issues. For instance, different sheets, even from the same batch, may cut and
bend differently due to stresses in the sheets caused by the mill’s rollers,” says Heinrich.
“This requires constant resetting of equipment during cutting and bending which could
cause a lot of expensive scrap and wasted, unproductive time.
“Cold rolled sheet stresses can cause problems with laser cutting when a sheet or plate
bows due to the stresses being released during cutting. If bowing takes place and the
operator doesn’t realise it, it could damage the laser’s head,” he said.
“Let’s say you are building a 30-40 m conveyor with a body and sub-frame for fitting rollers: there is a lot of repetitive bending. If each sheet or plate behaves differently, there will be a lot of resetting and stoppages.
“Another example of low quality inconsistencies occurs with round bar and flat bar
tolerances. Poor quality stainless steel round bar can sometimes be oval, when the round
bar starts with a negative tolerance and ends with a positive tolerance, causing problems
with bearing alignment. Flat bar can also be problematic: I have seen inferior stainless steel flat bar with rounded edges or very deep rolling marks along the width of the flat bar.”
NDE supplies a comprehensive range of quality stainless steel and aluminium, including
customer specific aluminium extrusions.
“We have the skill set, experience and stockholding that permits many of our customers to
order ‘just in time’. This illustrates the confidence our customers have in NDE’s ability to
provide a seamless supply for their production line, saving them time, effort and the cost of
holding stock.”
