Maintaining the overall health and integrity of your plant’s floor may not seem like a huge part of overall operations, but it is. Everything starts on the ground floor – from foot traffic, to forklift traffic. Small cracks lead to big cracks and big cracks could lead to having to replace an entire area of the floor which could cost production time and decreased efficiency.

It would be nice if your floor was one single huge concrete pad. The reality is that a floor is made up of 100s of slabs separated by joints. The purpose of these joints – to prevent random cracking in the concrete as it shrinks. Since raw materials and finished goods need to be transported, naturally, each individual joint is a transition point that forklifts and employees must cross.

Once the corner of a joint is damaged, spalling can

Many of the vibration issues that appear as the equipment settles in over time could be averted with better installation techniques. Many of the tasks associated with equipment setting are often considered less important than say alignment or leveling. These other tasks are assumed to be foolproof, easy or even unimportant. These are the less glamorous tasks, but they are critical to the reliability of the equipment. These are tasks like anchoring and grouting. 

Anchoring is critical to holding the equipment down to keep the equipment in the right position in relation to the other components of the system. They also keep the equipment from moving during rotation which could create issue with the moving parts of the system. 

Precision grouts are the key to evenly transferring unused forces from the equipment

Single-point lubricators are ideal for equipment requiring regular lubrication located in difficult to get to or high hazard areas. Self-contained units can dispense grease or oil with worry free consistency and can be mounted un to 15 feet aware from the bearing. Dispensing time can vary from 1 to 12 months and can be turned on and off for scheduled down time. 

Air Sentry® set the standard for contamination control breather technology in 1997, creating new state-of-the-art features that reduced particulate and moisture contamination. This innovative breather line was the first to integrate check valve technology and the first to offer replacement desiccant/filter cartridges, significantly reducing maintenance costs.

The clear view 360 degree design makes it east to inspect the saturation of the color-changing silica gel from a distance. The inert silica gel turns from gold to dark green to visually indicate the absorption of moisture and confirm the breather is getting the job done. 

Air Sentry products cover a wide range of application requirements. The line consists of Good, Better, and Best options designed to meet your specific application and duration specifications.

Concrete floors in almost any industry take a real beating on a daily basis. And with all of the traffic in a modern operation, they have to be in service as close to 24/7 as possible. Nobody can justify changing the traffic flow for any length of time unless there’s no other choice. 

Fortunately, there are many innovative options designed to repair floors and joints that require only a minimal time out of service. Most areas can be repaired and opened back up to service in as little as a matter of minutes. 

Even with all kinds of options, most people aren’t focused on these repairs. Some think that it’s just something that’s too complicated for them to tackle. Others don’t think they have the time to do it. The truth is, most of the time, these repairs are done with whatever is available. Give us a call when you

Most of the focus of plant/mill management is understandable on the “Manufacturing” processes. Attentions are on improving productivity and equipment reliability. That makes perfect sense, production equipment is the heart of the machine that is the plant or mill. The facility or physical plant is there to protect the processes and tie them all together with a physical structure designed specifically to house and protect the manufacturing and supporting operations. 

The plant or mill infrastructure is almost always an afterthought. Permanent repairs to it are put off or substituted with temporary fixes just to get to the next outage only to be put off again due to some unexpected failure or priority that arises. 

Many of these situations will become chronic and could put a strain on normal operations or