Separators Blog

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.

About 150 years ago, mechanized centrifugal cream separators hit the milk processing industry. People’s minds were blown. The technology flew off the shelves, and the dairy world exploded. 

Since then, the dairy industry has been able to grow at an unprecedented rate, and people have been wondering: what’s the next big innovation? What’s the next truly game-changing technology that will streamline industrial dairy processing?

Enter automation.

When it comes to maintaining industrial centrifuges, the effort you put in really does come back to you tenfold. Centrifuges are large, powerful machines, and they do what they do exceptionally well. With the right amount of attention paid to maintaining these machines and safety precautions, centrifuges can provide decades of consistent and reliable performance.

At Separators, we like sharing our hard-won knowledge and automated centrifuge insights with our clients. We believe that smart, driven plant managers and technicians value their equipment, and share a natural curiosity that leads to exciting innovations.

That’s why we prodded our seven-year veteran automation engineer, Jordan Vande Brake, for some insights into why he thinks automation will continue to play a vital role in dairy production facilities.

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

Whether or not you’ve ever heard of centripetal force before, you’ve definitely seen it in action, and even felt it in your entire body.

In fact, you’re probably using centripetal force more often than you realize. Even some of your home appliances help you use it for everyday tasks (more on that later).

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

Whether they’re enjoying syrup on their pancakes, or proudly wearing a silver necklace, the average citizen benefits from industrial centrifuges far more often than they probably realize — if they’ve even heard of them at all.

The Dairy Foods Magazine's The Dairy 100 List covers the top dairy companies in North America. This list includes brands, products made, and plant locations for the largest processors of fluid milk, ice cream, cheese, butter, cultured dairy products, dairy ingredients, and other dairy-derived foods and beverages. 

This is a syndication of the full article from the Dairy Foods Magazine website.