Background
This company is one of only three (3) in the United States manufacturing gelatin capsules which are later filled with a variety of medicines. Millions of capsules in hundreds of different colors are produced daily. Many of these shades are special order and require that the pigments be hand mixed into the high viscosity gelatin solution to avoid the "settling of color". Paddles, that resemble boat oars, are used to manually mix the special color into the gelatin.
Problem
Because this is a high viscosity solution, the liquid gelatin dried onto the paddles quite rapidly. The customer then had to soak the paddles in very hot water for several hours so the gelatin could be scraped and washed off manually. In order to switch to an automatic aqueous cleaning system, the system had to be capable of the following: 1) washing, rinsing and drying more than 25 paddles at a time; 2) cleaning three (3) different sized paddles in the same fixture, simultaneously, and 3) alleviating the man hours involved in soaking and scraping the dried solution off the paddles, thus reducing labor costs. Also, the machine's electrical box would need to be located in another room due to tight space constraints.
 Solution
Utilizing a standard F-5000-PCS machine, Better Engineering designed fixturing capable of effectively cleaning 30 paddles ranging from 43" to 49" simultaneously. In addition, the nozzle configuration was adapted so cleaning any sized paddle was effective. A stand-off electrical box with a 10 ft. cable was designed and wall mounted in an adjacent room.
System
An F-5000 PCS with a 10 hp regen. blower and a 21 kW heat tube, conductivity meter for the wash tank, special "paddle" fixture, a stand-off wall mounted electrical box, and a customer supplied steam blow-off.
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