Richard Schildwachter

“Where can you use centrifugal separators?” is a question that’s nearly impossible to answer. Centrifuge separation has applications across more industries than the average person can name — which would either make it a great or terrible question for pub trivia night. 

These high-speed industrial champions are vital to the processing of dairy products, beer, wine, paint, mineral oil, petroleum, fruit juice, ceramics, plastics, animal feed, pharmaceuticals… the list goes on.

The dairy industry is a highly competitive market. Not only are dairy processing plants competing with each other, but trends over the last two decades or so have increasingly put dairy at odds with the ever-growing plant-based market.

When you’re trying to do more with less and stay neck-in-neck with the competition, it’s vital to invest in the best possible equipment. Pressure may tighten margins and arteries, but it also provides an opportunity to innovate.

Let’s set the scene: Your company is shorthanded and struggling to hire staff, high employee turnover may be a challenge, the job market is increasingly competitive, and experienced employees are costly. On the contrary, there are an estimated 300,000 interns in the U.S. annually. Interns are typically current students or recent graduates seeking hands-on experience within a professional setting. In many fields, having a degree is no longer enough to secure the all-important graduate job offer in today’s world. 

Ten millennia ago, humans domesticated a small herd of wild ox in the Near East. And nearly 4,500 years later, they started milking them. Since then, humanity’s obsession with cow milk has spread into a multi-billion dollar industry and is still growing.

Ever since us clever homo sapiens figured out we could drink cow milk, the biological fact that milk separates naturally from cream has been part of that calculation. We’ve figured out how to make butter, ice cream (yum), cheese, kefir, and more recently, whey protein powders and probiotic yogurts.

What does delaying centrifuge maintenance actually cost?

Delaying centrifuge maintenance costs more than the repair itself. Based on Separators' analysis of 4,730 service work orders, emergency major service runs 33% higher than the same job done on a planned schedule — $34,326 on average versus $25,738 for planned major service — with total downtime impact reaching $62,000 to $186,000 per major emergency incident.

Smart facility managers know that preventive maintenance isn't an expense, but rather an investment in your operation's reliability and financial health. Here’s how we can help you make the most of that investment to get — and keep — your centrifuge up and running without substantial downtime or unnecessary steps.

A dirty centrifuge can cause a host of severe problems, ranging from product contamination to costly equipment damage.

Sometimes, something as simple as a plant visit can save a facility well over $15,000. Here’s how it happened.

Having the right replacement parts for your centrifuge equipment can be a real bottom-line saver. If you’ve ever been on the floor when a centrifuge breaks down, you know the mad scramble first hand. Sourcing centrifuge spare parts might not always be easy, but it is always essential. Here at Separators, our parts department’s primary goal is to get you the parts you need as quickly and efficiently as possible. But don’t just take my word for it. Watch this video to hear it from our team. 

There’s nothing quite like a global pandemic to help you figure out what’s really important. Lucky for us, we were already working on just that. We were toiling behind the scenes, taking a deep dive into Separators Inc. as a company.

Asking questions like: What kind of people are we? What do we stand for? How do we serve our customers? As it turns out, we had a pretty great idea of who we were, and we’ve been doing a lot of things right, but our exterior was a little behind the times. It didn't show us as a company of experts and craftspeople. A company centered on your centrifuge. 

Until now. 

Any problems with your centrifuge, no matter how minor, can halt your operations at a moment’s notice. And every minute your equipment isn’t working, you're losing time and money. Centrifuges do their job extraordinarily well, but only if you take the proper care to keep them running smoothly.