‘Z’ Shaped Bucket Elevator for Snack Production

This west London company is arguably one of the country’s largest snack food producers manufacturing crisps, extruded snacks and popcorn. In recent years it has merged with a European company to become an even bigger group offering a large portfolio of snack food and related products.  

The Task

Already heavily populated with Gough equipment it was almost second nature for senior technical staff to contact us when a conveying problem needed resolving. An existing bucket elevator of dubious origin had been causing issues for many months and as it was utilised within a key process area was having a major impact on production output. Gough were asked to evaluate the unit and if necessary, replace it with minimum disruption to their production.

The Result

Although a relatively simple task of replacing the existing unit with a Gough ‘Z’ shaped Swinglink bucket elevator the customer also wanted to be able to control throughput speed, incorporate metal detectable buckets and have multiple access points around the unit for ease of maintenance.

We accommodated this list of requests and manufactured the unit incorporating quick access panels and fitted our high wear polymer metal detectable buckets. We also fitted our newly designed motor control – a shaft mounted motor/gearbox combination controlled through an ABB inverter with speed and torque settings using a simple HDMI touchscreen interface.

To ensure uninterrupted production the installation took place over a weekend period utilising one of our experienced installation and service teams.