Industrial Mixing Equipment for Powder Based Products

How to Blend to Short Order Times

With more stringent regulations, rising labour costs and competition globally, there has never been a greater emphasis on production efficiency.

More and more demand is being placed on manufacturers to produce small volumes of more diversified products. Companies cannot simply afford to over-produce product and hold excess inventory to meet this demand. A more flexible approach that is efficient and lean is required.

Mixing is a critical aspect of a powder process, it’s the step where the manufacturer is adding the most value. With so many different mixing technologies and methodologies available it can be hard to see the right way forward. Conventional wisdom might suggest selecting a mixing system that is fast, but that may not fully address the need for flexibility.

How to Increase Manufacturing Flexibility

The increasingly complex nature of the recipes that consumers demand today means manufacturers need to adapt in order to survive.

How can manufacturing methods be improved to satisfy these customer needs, whilst also balancing product quality, safety and production costs? The right technology can revolutionise the agility of manufacturing enabling quick responses to changes in market demands.

So what is your weakest link?

In-line process systems by their design are linear – the raw materials enter the process in the Formulation Area before the final product is delivered out of the far end of the process line. The problem here is that the process line will only be as effective as its weakest link. Along the way, a vast array of processes are involved from dispensary & mixing, to sieving & packing, and in some cases, more complex processes such as granulation and drying are also involved. It is almost impossible to completely synchronise everything, so as a result, there is a lot of waiting time between one process and another.

Look at the blending time on your industrial mixer

A familiar bottleneck area is mixing. It is not uncommon for the Industrial Mixer to stand idle for long periods whilst Formulation of the recipe takes place. Then the Industrial Mixer remains inactive again whilst Packing is completed. This results in an inadequate OEE (overall equipment effectiveness) rate not only for the individual equipment but the process line as a whole, affecting production capacity.

With recipe proliferation, the increased need for recipe changeover further destroys this conventional way of processing.

Find out how you could increase Efficiency by 300%

Getting the Mix Right

Achieving the perfect blend is essential when making a high-quality product for the discerning consumer or to meet regulatory controls. To do that, you need the most suitable equipment for the job: a blender that is ideally suited to your recipes, your production line and your customers' demands. If you've already started the search for an industrial mixer for your premises, you'll have discovered a range of different styles from ribbon blenders and high shear blenders to tumble blenders.

Explore the world of tumble blending, what it is, how it works and the benefits it can bring to your business.

How to Add High Shear

If you've heard that tumble-blending doesn't work on recipes containing liquids or fats, we'd like you to take a closer look at how we have overcome this perception.

The Matcon IBC Blender is designed to accommodate our complementary Intensifier which adds high shear to the tumble-blending process.

The Intensifier consists of an 8 bladed shaft capable of rotation speeds from 500 – 3000 rpm. This rotation range allows the Intensifier to add low speed stirring to more friable mixtures or where particle reduction is an issue.

It is is mounted at the inlet of the Matcon IBC exposing it to the powder flow as the IBC travels through the inverted section of its rotation path. This greatly increases the shear and convection mixing process within the IBC industrial mixer. The Intensifier blades are designed to breakdown agglomerates in raw material allowing particles to be integrated into the powder mass, whilst at the same time preventing the formation of agglomerates from cohesive inter-particle forces, liquid bridges or free fats.

Why Rotational Speed is Important

Having selected to use tumble blending for your powders, how do you know what settings are the best to use? It's important to identify which blender rotation speed will mix your recipe effectively. The blender can be set to rotate at different speeds from 4 to 18 rpm to match the characteristics of your powder mix whether that is a friable or a cohesive material.

Discover the right rotation speed for your ingredients.

Using an Intensifier

The strengths of the tumble blender are clear when combining solids. But what happens when you want to add liquid to the mix? Or you want to work with sticky or tacky solids, or paste-like materials? Such ingredients need to be treated differently to ensure a lump-free blend that gentle mixing can't guarantee.

Traditionally, tumble blenders were not considered to be very versatile in these situations. But for most manufacturers, buying a different kind of blending solution is neither cost nor space-effective. However, there is an alternative.

By equipping the Matcon tumble blender with a high-speed intensifier bar, we are able to offer the best of both worlds. Manufacturers can choose to use their tumble blender in the traditional way or they can attach the high shear blades to blend fluid additions or agglomerated powders to form a flawless end product.