Ishida Europe, a UK-based manufacturer of complete weighing, inspection and packing line solutions, has developed a new internal moisture sensor and monitoring system designed to address the problem of water ingress for fresh and frozen weighing applications.
Designed for multihead weighers, the new solution is intended to allow fresh and frozen food producers to easily control and prevent water ingress into their critical production equipment.
The new solution, when coupled with Ishida’s advanced Sentinel monitoring and reporting system, will also ensure an enhanced performance and longer term reliability, the firm said.
The Ishida solution is three dew and temperature sensors. It is placed at key points within the weigher including under the top cover, in the turret and in the main body.
In addition to providing a constant monitoring of humidity levels within the weigher, the solution send out a series of escalating alerts to operators in case of high humidity levels.
Additionally, the solution provides three stages of alerts which including a yellow alert if the humidity level is between 70% and 79%, which can typically be cleared using air purge system to remove the moisture from the machine.
If the humidity level reaches between 80% and 89%, the solution creates a red alert, resulting in shutdown of weigher’s Remote Control Unit’s power. The power, whoever, can be restored only if the moisture levels have dropped below the 80% threshold.
The sensor allows operates to configure alarms such as an audible alarm or a series of beacon warning lights to indicate that critical moisture levels, above 90%, have been reached.
Ishida Europe EMEA – Multihead Weighers business manager Ian Atkinson said: “Our multihead weighers are renowned for their reliability and efficiency, but the downside to this is that the machines can still continue to operate for a long time even in harsh environments where their levels of protection have been compromised.
“As a result, operators may be unaware of major faults until it is too late to take remedial action, leading to unwanted downtime and frustration.
“The availability of our moisture sensors, together with the real time reporting capabilities of Sentinel, eliminates this problem so that the weighers are able deliver their highest speeds and accuracy unimpeded and in this way maintain constant high production throughput and efficiencies.”
Available on all Ishida RV and RVE WP models, the moisture sensing options are fitted as standard to the company’s fixed Sector Solution models for fresh and frozen applications.