We were approached by an award winning meat and poultry manufacturer, who wanted to upgrade their current processing plant by replacing their ageing touch screen computers and protective stainless steel enclosures with modern, smaller footprint, multi-touch computer terminals.
In this particular factory, the food preparation areas receive a chemical wash down every evening using high power jet washers, and the ambient temperature is dropped below freezing to ensure all areas are thoroughly sanitised inline with safety and hygiene procedures. This presents a problem for some touch screen terminals as chemical wash down can cause corrosion in
products which use the wrong type or grade of metal housing. Similarly, temperature shock can also cause problems, so a hardened
industrial computing product was required to fulfill the demands of the installation.
Having successfully deployed over 800 touch screen terminals in this type of environment over the last 10 years, Impulse have gained very valuable insights into the
food & beverage industry. On this occasion, our Technical Account Manager was able to offer the
Axiomtek GOT815-834 IP69K Touch screen PC, which uses a
food grade 316 housing to combat the corrosive environment. 316
stainless steel has a much higher chromium and nickel content then 304
stainless steel, so, when compared to 304, it not only has a much higher resistance to the acids and alkalis found in industrial cleaning
products, but also to the salts often present in
food preparation areas.
The
Axiomtek GOT815-834 has a wide operating temperature of -20°C to +55°C, which can cope very easily with the -5°C daily temperature shock in the factory without having to power off or be protected with covers. The
GOT815-834 also has a wide 9V to 36V DC input which was ideal for our customer, as they used common 24V DC power throughout the factory. Finally, the
GOT815-834 is designed to withstand high temperature steam and jet washing to
IP69K standards, making it ideal for the
food manufacturing industry.
For added peace of mind we were able to offer an evaluation system from our loan stock to allow our customer to trial the product in situ before proceeding with the project.
Custom cable sets
The
GOT815-834 comes from the manufacturer with a standard set of 1.8 metre M12
waterproof cables, but we know from our previous experience no two factory installations are the same. Therefore, we consulted with our customer as to the exact types of mating connectors required for their
weighing machines and internal systems and then created a bespoke set of
IP67 rated M12 cables to the customer's exact requirements and lengths.
Extended warranty and stock holding
For this project, our customer required a 5-year warranty in order to extend the lifetime of their system. Typically, our
manufacturing partners offer a standard 2-year warranty, so, when necessary, we utilise our long-term partner relationships to negotiate tailored service level agreements as and when required by our customers. Not only were we able to offer a 5-year warranty package, but in addition we offered to hold terminals and cable sets in call off stock to accommodate project timescales, facilitating next day delivery for spares and ad-hoc requirements in the future.