angle vs. Tube with Sanitary Food Processing Equipment

 Summary of an interview with Chad the owner and Steve a designer of IME.

When you are designing a piece of food processing equipment you have a choice. Should you use angle or tube on the equipment?

The question is which would you use Angle or tube? Why would you use each one? What are the downfalls and the positives of each type?

 Chad: First of all, we'd rather build the equipment out a tube because of strength. The tube is much stronger than the angle.

 Steve: I'll say that I would agree with that.

 Doug: Why would you rather use a tube? Tube has more inherent problems when used in the sanitary food processing equipment.

 Chad: Well, sanitation aside tube is much stronger. However, from a practical standpoint and a fabrication point of view, we love it when we can build equipment out of the square tube because it's stronger, it's easier to build. The tube holds better. It's sturdier.

 Steve: Plus, it's easier to work with and has square corners that come together. It looks good when it's done. (usually)

 Chad: Yes. But understanding sanitary design and it's especially in the USDA meat packing plants, it's a no-no. You cannot use square tubing. We have to rethink the design of the equipment.

 Doug: You can't use square tubing in a meatpacking plant.

 Chad: Not hard at all. Even handrails are an angle.

 Doug: So, tell me the difference. Because I always thought tubing was round.

 Chad: It is. tubing is round and square.

 Doug: OK. When you talk about tubing, you’re talking about square and round.

 Chad: Yes. OK, angled is just a piece of metal that's is at an angle. It's thin on the edge. It gets stronger in the middle. It's thicker and then it goes back thinner. Angle does have some structure. So, what it's caused us to do, for example with a conveyor for sanitary design is we'll cut a flat pattern, such as four legs structure members and then we bend it to give it strength. Sanitary design is what has caused us to use angle, so we are not using the tube.

 Steve: But the real problem isn’t square, or round is that it's hollow. Usually, I could say, always when something hollow leaves here its completely seal welded.

 Doug: If you use the tube in sanitary design, it has to be completely seal welded. So, there are no pockets for bacteria to grow.

 Steve: Exactly. The problem comes, though, is you don't know what might happen down the line. Someone might change that piece of equipment or drill a hole in it.

 Chad: or mount an electrical bracket there.

 Steve: Now you have a place for water to get in and where there are water and food particles. Now you've got a perfect environment for bacterial growth.

 Chad: We always say, that we seal it all. The problem is we've done some demo projects where we'll demo an old deck that's got square tubing in these food plants, they'll use high-pressure water. And I mean, they clean with high pressure. It has three to six hundred PSI of water. Yeah, it's going to find the hole and we've cut into some decks that water comes gushing out of the legs When we demo some equipment, that's concerning.

 Doug: When you use the tube how do you seal it completely? Can you fill it? Is this possible? So, there are no leaks?

 Steve: Well, it's tough I'd say.

 Steve: You can't guarantee it because you don't know what it's going to happen down the line. Also, as good as we are, it's possible to get a little pinhole or even a stress crack. So, there's something that could happen that would allow water to get inside that tube. So, the cure to that problem is just don't ever use to.

 Doug: Just don't use it.

 Steve: Don't use it.

 Doug: Completely take it out of the design.

 Chad: And that's tough sometimes when you're talking big structure because the angle is not as nice and not as strong.

 Doug: So, how do you overcome that if the angles are not strong enough.

 Chad: Well, then you fabricate something. So, we either build our own I-beam. I-beams or strong. A lot of times with stainless, we have to build an I-Beam because you can't buy one.

 Steve: or we can use a channel iron. Yeah, that's a three-sided piece. It's got an open side. So, there's no enclosed area.

 Doug: There's a thickness of the metal. Make a difference.

Steve: Sure. Yeah. I have a sticker. It is the stronger it is. So how do you determine which you know?

 Doug: So how do you determine if you're going angle it? Because that's best for sanitation. But how do you determine the thickness of the metal that you're going to need and where to place it? How do all these components come together?

 Steve: Well, it has a lot to do with experience. Especially with conveyers, because there are so many conveyers, we know what works. There are calculations you can do to analyze material in a welded structure to make sure it's strong enough and we have software that helps with that as well.

 Chad: We run the calculations to see what kind of load it can hold. If it needs to hold a thousand pounds per square foot or whatever, we can factor that in the design and run the program to check it.

 Doug: It tells you to use the gauge of steel to use?

 Chad: You can see the weaknesses. So, you'll add something here. There's a brace or something like that.

 Doug: How does 3D design apply in this then? Are you able to take a look at the material and make a working model the customer can see it?

 Steve: That's correct.

 Chad: If you didn't have AutoCAD and the 3D software. It would be very difficult to design this way. That's why they would build stairways out of channel iron and square tubing. They'd have to lay out every stair or conveyor. They would just start with square tubing and build a frame and then put some bearings on it. Step back and say we better change that. A lot of stuff got overbuilt.

 Steve: The problem with that is that it just costs more. It just means being so strong. There's no way it's going to fail but it does not necessarily mean it’s sanitary.

 Chad: Oh, no, it wasn't sanitary at all.

 Doug: Two issues when it comes to sanitary. One is the surface in which the food actually contacts and second the other areas like the legs and the handrails, where it doesn't necessarily come into contact. But can it also contaminate the food if it accidentally comes in contact or somebody touches it, then touches the food?

 Steve: Yeah, that's how it happens a lot by just people touching hands, touching one place and then touch in another place.

 Chad: We had an issue down at one of the plants. The floor drains covers were fabricated in a way where they weren't seal welded. So, there's a lot of gaps and bacteria can grow in. The bacteria would migrate and work its way up onto the equipment where it would get splashed by the spray from the guys cleaning.

 Steve: And then the conveyor's leg was built in such a way that it could harbor bacteria. Yeah, it started in the floor drain.

 Chad: What would happen is the QA people would come with their Q-Tip. You know, I talk about this all the time and swab the legs on the conveyers. They would fail because they had bacteria.

 Doug: but you said that tubing is your favorite to use because of the strength but not because but not for sanitary design.

 Steve: And at this point, there still are a lot of conveyors and equipment out there that were made out of the tubing. For a time, it was great because ignorance is bliss. We didn't know it was a problem. But it's been about 15 years or so. I try to avoid designs with tubing.

 Doug: It does it make a difference in the type of food? We're in potato country or sugar beet country? We're talking about processing, drying…

 Chad: it depends on the facility. What determines if you use sanitary design is if the food's ready to eat or if it gets cooked, if there's a cooking process after it leaves that point and potatoes always get cooked, they get.

 Steve: I just built some conveyers and we did use square tube frames because again, it's just so much easier to work with, but it's for raw potatoes right now. And some of this equipment was washing equipment to wash the dirt off the potatoes. So, it wasn't such a critical deal at that stage of the processing. When they're done with what they're doing in that process. It's not clean. It's not fit to eat yet.

 Chad: So, you go from that process to the process where we were working on a line where it's ready to eat. Even the clothes that you wear when you go into the room when they're in production has to be sterile, you know, protects from outside contaminates. And that's where the biggest concern of bacteria is because it gets put in a box and shipped out to the store and people buy it and eat it right away. And so, there's the no-cook process. So, it has to be clean, very clean. So sanitary design is like at the height.

Doug: But then like meat, you build equipment for meat processing?

Chad: We built some decks. I never thought we'd build handrails out of angle iron, but we do. They cannot have a closed tube round or square.

Steve: that's anywhere in the process.

Chad: Anywhere. Yeah. everything has to be tagged.

Doug: What does tagged mean?

Chad: Where sheet metal meets, you have to, if you're not able to seal weld it all the way, ever so often and cut it to where there's a gap that can be washed.

Doug: When I watched him put together the conveyor, you designed it. So, it looked like jigsaw puzzle pieces coming together.

Steve: So, you're talking about the part that that serves two purposes, though. That's kind of a neat deal. We make it so that some slots and tabs fit together. So, you can't put it together wrong. But at the same time, you're only welding that little tab part. So, there's a lot less welding. And then there's the tab is usually longer than it needs to be. So, it ends up making a big gap between the two pieces that are joined. And that gap is what you want. So, you can clean through a flow. So, it doesn't harbor bacteria. It's those tabs that you have to worry about. Oh, there seal welded all the way around.

Chad: Well it usually it's pretty close to a hundred percent. Where there are no gaps and there are no places for bacteria to get in there. Yeah. Generally stainless and sanitary designs for food go hand-in-hand.

Doug: Yeah. I know they've approved titanium.

Chad: Well that and aluminum. What you're fine with aluminum or titanium are the cleaning solutions that they use. The chemicals that they use eat aluminum.

Steve: So, aluminum used to be great. I use to make a lot of parts out of aluminum. Yeah. Until the cleaning procedures changed in the factories. They use more chlorine now than they used to.

Chad: And if it's anodized aluminum, if it's anodized aluminum which is a coating. It's like a powder coat. It's just the process. A lot of aluminum is anodized. Well, the chemical just eats that off and it starts to chip in. And then you got problems because now you're getting it into the food chain.

Steve: It's a real rough surface that can happen. You know, it's really hard to clean.

Chad: The suppliers of buy-out parts like gearboxes and motors and things, they're like, oh, it's anodized. We're fine. No. And they're like, oh no, it's been tested. You know, we have to put our foot down, say, no, that's not what we need. No, because we know what chemicals will do to that material.

Doug: We're talking about angle versus tube. It starts with you guys knowing what you're doing.

Chad: Yeah. What works and what doesn't. So even the guys who are in the food processing business may not know what works.

Doug: They just know they need a piece of equipment. Sure. It's going to move these potatoes from here to there and it needs to be sanitary, but they may not understand all the sanitary issues.

Chad: We just went to the pack expo there in Vegas and, you know, walking around looking at some of the equipment. Steve and I were like, oh, that's not sanitary. That's not sanitary. That's not going to work. A lot of these engineers and the plants don't understand it until it's a problem. So, everyone has a lot to learn. We have a lot of experience but we're still learning.

Steve: We're still learning with every job. We learn something we should do better next time but every plant's different.

Chad: You go in some of these potato plants that have old equipment and you can't believe how rough and rusty it is. Understanding what the customers need. That's the biggest thing. What we have found, and I've said this before, it's pretty tough to take that old equipment that was built back in the day and make it sanitary. It's because the sanitary design starts with the design. It’s very difficult to take an old piece of equipment and make it work. Some of these plants that you walk in have been there for a long time. You can't say that's tubing. Let's cut it here and put an angle on. It doesn't work. It's cheaper just to start over. You can Band-Aid it forever and still has a problem. As soon as you make a connection, you're going to have sanitary issues.

Steve: No food player wants their name in the news. Saying they got all these people sick. That’s the number one priority. Don’t get anyone sick. Wasn't there a peanut factory? There was a peanut factory. I think someone went to prison.

Chad: It's important to understand. Here's where we use angle. Here's where we use tubing. That's why it's so important to select the right fabricator and the right designer to do these projects. The smallest one piece of equipment that's causing the bacteria problem can affect the whole process, the whole plant.

Steve: Bacteria travels fast

Doug: What's your advice on choosing a good fabricator?

Chad: That's a good question. Understanding the fabricator's experience and attention to detail. Also references, I've had clients ask about other contractors.

Steve: Your reputation, I think is huge, too. You know, as a contractor, understanding that we have solved these issues for our customers.

Chad: A site visit. We'll go see what they have going on. Usually, it all makes sense. We can come up with a solution to help them. Once we see their process and know what they're trying to accomplish. I was going to ask this to Steve. Have we've solved a lot of problems with bacteria? Did it solve it for good?

Steve: Well, I doubt it. There are just so many nooks and crannies in any process, in any factory. There's an opportunity for bacteria to grow everywhere you look. But the best we can do and what we do is we just try to reduce the probability by anything that we build to put in there is going to be better than what was there. And it's just a continual improvement. It's reducing the probability that they're going to have a problem.

Doug: Because even with Angle, like you mentioned, if you drill a hole to which you see in the amount of box on it. Now you have a problem with the angle. They drill a hole and they want to hang something, and they put a little bolt there.

Chad: Now two surfaces are touching that is not sealed.

Doug: Do you have an education process.

Chad: Well, there's been more than one time on a walkthrough. You don't want to do that because it's going to grow bacteria here, you're right. You know we'll suggest things maybe turn them in a different direction.

Steve: You touched on it, Steve. Being able to clean it, making it so where they can wash all that bacteria off every day because that's what they do. They clean every night usually or every time they change processes in a USDA facility.

Chad: So, making it so it can be washed cleaned every day gets that keeps that bacteria away.

Steve: That's pretty hard. I mean that's when you talk about designing something, you're going to be spraying down high pressure and with chemicals every day. That's a whole other issue too is how do you make your stuff stand up to that much water? Yeah. Yeah, that's a day out in the high, the high-pressure water.

Chad: Well I think it's been an exciting adventure for me. You know, just learning the sanitary design. I worked with Steve first before he worked for us as a contractor and you know, we worked together on a lot of stuff and solved a lot of problems. I used to joke around that those guys with the white Q-tips were my favorite people because they created so much work for us. But it all made sense what we were doing and why we were doing it.

Doug: You started in the beverage industry, which that's a whole other level. clean, clean, clean. You're dealing with the tube. It's got to be a challenge.

Chad: Yeah. I think once you understand the concept, you know, things like angles and square tubes and tabbing things together. Once you understand, you can identify really quick the problem areas.

 So, it's really fun to learn the process