Poll: Pneumatic Solenoid Valve Brand Preference

What is your Pneumatic Solenoid Valve Brand Preference for a washdown environment?

I have Numatics, Norgren, Parker, SMC, Mac, and a few others and we need to standardize. I am relatively new to food environments and the elders here prefer SMC to Mac Valves, which has been my past favorite for seldom and simple maintenance.

My vote is for numatics with Mac in second. I had one application with about 2 dozen valves that spent the whole day getting soaked. After trying several other valves with out any luck with survivability we installed numatics valves and never had a problem again.

Burkert

"washdown and temps between 0F and 30F degrees"

The above in your poll appears to be in conflict as the temperature range in degrees F is below freezing in water for washdown.

Did you mean degrees C ?

Those temps are during production. During washdown, it is a wet and steamy 70-80 degrees F, but few of the valves must operate during washdown, they just have to survive all the hose blasting and sanitizer.

Only one room runs at the low end, most of the pneumatics are used right around the freezing mark.

OkiePC said:

Those temps are during production. During washdown, it is a wet and steamy 70-80 degrees F, but few of the valves must operate during washdown, they just have to survive all the hose blasting and sanitizer.

Only one room runs at the low end, most of the pneumatics are used right around the freezing mark.

Click to expand...

Okie
conditions are about same where I work. We make them "gourmet" spreads. Lots of cheese, butter, oil, etc. Rooms are right around 30 to 35.

We have switched to using an acid (I think) containing solution as one part of our washdown process. This is not doing the aluminum stuff any good of course.

Talked with my brother who services a lot of pneumatics and hydraulics his generic first choice is Parker.

In my experience here and in plastics extrusion (also quite wet and DIRTY) ASCO diaphram valves did quite well (for water and HOT 300F oil). Numatics also seems to do quite well.

SUBJECT SWITCH
The main problem I see with pneumatic controls and actuators is mechanical. Most of those problems are lack of lube.
Boss does not want to use oil in pneumatic oilers because it gets too thick at the cool temperatures. I firmly believe in lubing pneumatic components - only problem is finding one that will work at low temp, that is FDA omni domnied for food processing AND will please bossman. Brother suggested transmission fluid.
What do you use for lubing pneumatic valves and actuators?

Dan Bentler

We use mineral oil (only when we have to) for pneumatic lube and exclusively for hydraulic fluid.