The KRONEN team has upgraded its well-established cutting machine for high production capacities with regard to hygienic design and the cost-saving and resource-conserving replacement of two important spare parts.
Alongside the GS 10-2, the GS 20 is a high-performance belt cutting machine considered to be a classic KRONEN product. Nevertheless, even well-established machines are regularly put to the test in consideration of new findings, experiences from permanent operation in practice and new materials.
To ensure that the cutting machines achieve perfect cutting results on a long-term basis, parts such as the Roller bearing support holder for the transport belt and downholder belt need to be replaced after a certain amount of time. Up until now, this process has required the blocks to be replaced in their entirety. Now, however, the Roller bearing support holders have been revised so that only the bearing axle support bars have to be replaced, thus achieving a significant reduction in replacement costs. The new versions of the knife edge and deflection are backward compatible. As a result, customers making a single purchase of a new blade edge and baffle in the future will also only need to replace the bridges, meaning that everyone can benefit from the cost savings when purchasing spare parts.
A number of measures have been implemented to improve the machine’s hygienic design, for example reducing the number of screw fastenings inside the machine, optimizing the product outfeed and redesigning the blade flange. Further improving the hygienic design was also the aim when upgrading an important optional accessory for the GS 20, the swivel arm for easily replacing the cutting disks. Here, hollow spaces were eliminated, and the number of screw fastenings was reduced.
The swivel arm is used to replace heavy cutting disks – the cutting disk is attached to the swivel arm and lifted by the machine so that the machine operator does not have to lift down the heavy disks by hand. The machine also features a new function for fixing the carriage that allows the cutting disk to be moved back and forth. This function prevents the swivel arm from being shifted unintentionally when moving the belt cutting machine, thus further improving operational safety.
