Automation has become an essential part of bulk material handling and helps facilities run efficiently, safely, and cost-effectively. Reliable control systems keep materials moving and help teams meet production goals. When these systems are designed with real-world needs in mind, they can boost throughput and reduce downtime while supporting smarter operations.

Many manufacturers face daily operational challenges such as outdated controls, integration headaches, safety compliance, and budget constraints. Hapman addresses these by carefully evaluating each facility’s needs and providing custom automation solutions that go beyond just their proprietary conveying equipment. Whether the requirement is to update legacy controls so they can communicate with Hapman’s latest panels or to deliver a tailored package that incorporates all equipment into a single process, Hapman’s approach ensures no system operates in isolation.

Full-Service Solutions That Work Together

One of the most noticeable trends in the market is the growing demand for automation systems that can control a mix of equipment from different manufacturers, such as mixers or packaging machines. Hapman responds to this by providing full turnkey solutions that keep everything connected and simple for operators. This seamless integration reduces complications and keeps the process moving smoothly.

Hapman’s solutions are especially valuable when existing plant equipment is a complex mix of old and new. For example, Hapman engineers recently unified three separate process steps for a client by bringing disparate systems together in one easy-to-manage control package. This level of integration allows the machinery before and after the Hapman system to operate together without operator intervention, creating a fully integrated and streamlined workflow.

Why In-House Control Packages Matter

Hapman builds control packages in-house rather than relying entirely on third-party vendors. This decision allows for greater quality control, each panel is tested before shipping to ensure dependability for the end user. The hands-on approach guarantees that systems meet Hapman’s standards for consistent performance through every step of the process.

By manufacturing controls internally, Hapman maintains complete oversight throughout the process, from initial design to final testing. Every panel is function-tested in-house before delivery, ensuring full reliability and integration, and giving customers peace of mind that their automation will work as promised right from day one.

Real Advantages for Clients

Choosing Hapman’s full-service, engineered automation systems gives customers several key benefits. Instead of stitching together piecemeal components, clients receive a full turnkey solution where everything works together from the start. This reduces risk, lowers maintenance costs, and helps operators quickly address any issues on the floor, since the system lets them know exactly where a fault has occurred and signals when materials are running low.

Operators also benefit from intuitive panel displays that tell them where any issue has occurred and provide alerts for upcoming process events, such as when additional material needs to be loaded. This advanced notification enables staff to respond quickly, minimizing downtime while supporting safer and more predictable production.

Seamless Plant Integration

Flexibility and compatibility are central to Hapman’s systems. Control platforms are designed to communicate with many types of distributed control systems, as well as programmable logic controllers and multiple communication protocols. Teams can take advantage of Hapman’s automation without abandoning existing infrastructure, creating a more unified and reliable facility.

No matter the industry, whether it is food, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, or agriculture, Hapman collaborates closely with each customer to ensure compliance with all standards. This includes designing panels for hazardous locations and providing solutions to meet or exceed industry regulations. For instance, when a client in the agriculture sector needed to modernize controls, Hapman developed a system that brought all plant operations up to spec, connecting multiple processes together into one platform and greatly enhancing operational oversight.

Built for Smarter Material Handling

Hapman’s commitment to in-house engineering and complete automation ensures every plant can run efficiently and confidently. From testing every panel before it leaves the facility to providing controls that keep workflows smooth, Hapman helps customers optimize their process, minimize downtime, and simplify daily operations.

Whether upgrading a single line or overseeing a plant-wide controls modernization, Hapman’s collaborative, solutions-driven approach provides the backbone for safer, more efficient bulk material handling, today and into the future.

The post Smart Controls: Keeping Bulk Material Handling Efficient and Reliable appeared first on Hapman.

Improving efficiency in batching and blending is simple in concept. All you need to do is produce the most possible product using the least possible resources. That’s easier said than done, but by identifying challenges and applying engineering know-how you’ll find that small steps can lead to great strides in your batching and blending operations.

Efficiency improvements can start small with a single improvement in your process or a design upgrade to a single piece of equipment. A single “win” can get you in the race, be it a way to speed a machine’s changeover, block a material flow obstruction, improve metering accuracy, or remove a bottleneck. Each success leads to another. No matter the scope of your efforts or applications involved, you’ll likely confront some or all these challenges in engineering a solution for you, your process, and your customers:

1.           Inefficient batching process

2.           Poor recipe control

3.           Loss of material

4.           Labor/experience shortage

These challenges are interrelated, and we will discuss them — and solutions to overcome them — below.

1. Inefficient batch processing

Batch processes in any industry share many common efficiency challenges. Inefficient batching can be both the cause and result of production bottlenecks, delays between process steps or machine hand-offs, and overall waste in all its forms.

On the other hand, equipment and process design that addresses the right problems can unlock new levels of process performance. For example, adding a lump breaker can eliminate agglomerations in small-volume metering, or a feeder upgrade can improve dosing accuracy by improving the flow of sluggish granules or powders. (Related reading: Turn Batching Challenges Into a Competitive Advantage.)

In other cases, efficiency can be optimized by rethinking how materials can be moved from Point A to Point B within the constraints of the physical realities of your facility. For example, not all buildings can accommodate mezzanine levels for filling or conveyors to transport materials long distances. In such cases, alternative approaches can provide an efficient solution, as Lawrence Foods, a manufacturer of premium bakery ingredients, learned.

The company needed to pre-weigh bulk bags of powdered sugar from incoming 2,200-pound bags and create two 1,000-pound bags for downstream processing. However, the facility lacked sufficient ceiling height to unload the bulk bag directly into a filler in a single, vertical common frame.

The solution took the form of an integrated system using side-by-side frames incorporating a bulk bag unloader, a 15-foot screw conveyor, and a bag filler to create the 1,000-pound bags of powdered sugar. Weight and process controls ensured accuracy and filling directly onto a pallet enabled easy fork truck removal and transport to production. As a result, the company gained an engineered solution to overcome challenges due to space constraints, bypassing the need to modify its facility. Additional features aid efficiency, safety, dust control, ergonomics, and flexibility for future changes. (Learn the details of Lawrence Foods’ installation by reading  Unload, Convey, Fill, Repeat.)

2. Poor recipe control

Recipe control picks up where batch management leaves off. A lack of comprehensive controls, from accurate measurement to connected digital controls, can lead to many sources of process inefficiency. These include errors caused by manual keying-in recipe parameters, lost time, production bottlenecks, reduced productivity, and increased costs. The solution to these and other weaknesses is digitalization, which enables the additional benefit of recipe management software tools for analyzing accuracy, quality, and other efficiency-related factors.

Many companies rely on manual data entry, which leads to quality deficiencies, product scrap and rework, inefficient labor, and downtime. This can result in losses of $1,000 or more for a 2,000-pound batch. We have seen companies with more than 50 recipes whose operators manually key-in parameters based on information from disparate sources such as clipboards and spreadsheets. In some cases, a vital piece of missing information caused delays, and the lack of efficient tracking documentation during and after processing compromised proper quality control and slowed efforts to improve processing.

Today, process control technology addresses such problems with long-established machine and process control technology. An operator panel connected to the programmable logic controller (PLC) running the equipment stores all recipes. These can be loaded for processing with little more effort than pressing a touchscreen of a menu selection (or even scanning a QR code for a recipe). Improvements can enhance process consistency, product quality, productivity, waste reduction, and more.

Operator interface software also provides alerts and tracks process data for additional uses. These include tracking and trending data for one or more pieces of equipment locally; or using a central workstation to track key performance indicators (KPIs) across a fuller set of operations. Process data can also be presented to multiple users in different roles for different reasons: plant initiatives, vendor remote maintenance services, corporate data analytics, compliance reporting, or any number of good, approved uses. (Click to read an overview of related Controls & Automation solutions.)

3. Loss of material

Material losses can occur anywhere in conveying, handling, and processing — from spills in manual or mechanical handling operations to dust from improperly sealed conveyors. In terms of equipment, bag filling is perhaps the most common source of costly material losses due to excessive overfilling, or product giveaway, to ensure compliance with weight requirements.

In one case, a company was experiencing losses with small, 320-ounce batches of a valuable material costing $1,200 per ounce. To ensure it met weight requirements, the company was overfilling and giving away profits, sometimes by more than two ounces per batch. Once the company identified the problem, the company upgraded to new, more accurate loss-in-weight feeders, precisely controlled overfilling to within 25 grams, and saved approximately $2,000 on each batch.

Loss-in-weight, or gravimetric, feeders are generally preferred for such quality-critical applications, however, volumetric feeders can be used for accurate filling at higher speeds. However, this choice is unlikely if your material’s bulk density varies such as when a hygroscopic material reacts to humidity and/or forms agglomerations. (Related reading: Volumetric vs. Gravimetric Feeder Operation).

Competitive realities typically lead plants to integrate multiple equipment assets with custom engineering and, increasingly, digital automation. One company used both techniques to more efficiently meter controlled amounts of four powdered ingredients. The project included several components including bulk bag unloaders, a dust collector to prevent a separate waste stream and lost product; pneumatic bag agitators to fluidize the material; and a lump breaker to tackle any agglomerations. From there, the powders were ready for loss-in-weight screw feeding

to a slurry tank for processing. The result was that the conditioned materials contributed to the optimal downstream mixing process performance. Process controls and user-friendly monitoring tools further eased the job and reduced labor requirements. (Click for related reading on Bulk Bag Unloading, Pneumatic Conveying, and Material Metering.)

4.Labor/experience shortages

Properly engineered mechanical and automation solutions provide additional benefits for productivity to reduce labor costs and overcome the difficulty of finding and training skilled labor.

Automation brings positive impacts in many ways to overcome labor and productivity challenges. It’s most visible to operators in the form of user-friendly interfaces that ease

tasks and save time. The benefits are also critical for operational continuity as experienced workers exit the workforce, taking their experience and knowledge with them. It also reduces companies’ requirements for up-front training and everyday labor requirements.

When discussing the company that used automation to improve recipe control (Challenge No.2 above), that operation used to require two operators: one to load the batch, and another to manage the recipe. After the automation upgrade, only one operator is needed for that processing station.

Digital automation together with mechanical design features both contribute to labor savings. Material handling equipment that is easy to operate alleviates environmental concerns and promotes health and safety in a processing facility in addition to solving labor challenges. Likewise, today’s equipment designs feature time-saving features that offer easy access for maintenance operations, quick clean-in-place with easy disassembly for cleaning, quick-release features, and more. In turn, digital automation makes it easier for one person to manage more parts of a process, which is essential for companies relying on fewer workers.

In the chemical industry, processors face the ongoing challenge of effectively mixing solids and liquids to blend slurries while minimizing labor (among other factors such as floor space, dusting, and energy usage). This traditionally entailed multiple workers and labor-intensive operations. Examples include workers climbing ladders and opening equipment doors with ingredients/materials in hand; controlling mixer agitators; and incurring risk in potentially caustic or hazardous environments. Today, solutions are available such as sealed conveyors

(e.g., pneumatic, tubular, helix) and automated bag-handling and processing equipment; valves on bag-handling equipment, and self-contained batching/blending equipment offer enhanced worker safety, labor savings, and high throughput. (Learn more by reading Pre-Mix Solutions and Slurries – Effectively, Economically, and Safely.)

Additional technologies offer greater cost-effectiveness and labor savings than ever, including labor-saving automated storage and retrieval systems (ASRS) and autonomous mobile robots (AMR) that shuttle materials across warehouses and production areas. (Learn more by reading: Using Material Handling Automation to Improve Efficiency.)

Efficiency: It’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon

There’s no single solution for any given material handling, batching, or blending application. Significant efficiency improvements require varying degrees of customization to meet your material, processing, and business goals. Asking the right questions of your internal team and your external partners can take you closer and closer to your project’s finish line — and beyond, because the race toward greater efficiency and competitiveness is an ongoing journey.

When it comes to selecting a partner to provide equipment, systems, and engineering services, it’s most important that they have the breadth of expertise and deep knowledge of your needs, This, in turn, can go beyond solving problems to open new opportunities and benefits spanning design, reliability, serviceability, and much more.

About Hapman

We are a global manufacturer of standard and custom bulk material handling equipment and complete material handling systems, with locations in North America, Europe, and Asia. Our process has been proven across 12,000 applications across all major bulk material processing industries in every US state and 56 countries worldwide.

Whether your equipment needs are standard and straightforward or elaborate and controlled, Hapman’s team of applications experts will assist you with any level of support.

Our company culture is driven by new ideas, fresh thinking, and continuous improvement. That’s why Ideas that Move is more than a slogan. It’s an integral part of who we are. We seek to acquire and share new knowledge, build on our experience, collaborate with you and other industry experts, and push perceived process limitations — all while fully embracing disciplined engineering and quality material handling practices.

At Hapman, we are more than a material handling systems provider. We are your business partner. We are dedicated to achieving your highest level of trust and satisfaction and earning your confidence in our commitment and expertise.

Take the next step towards innovation and excellence. Contact our experts at (800) 427-6260 or sales@hapman.com for a personalized consultation.

The post Efficiency in Batching & Blending: 4 Common Challenges and How to Fix Them appeared first on Hapman.

Understanding how dust forms, recognizing its potential hazards, and implementing effective control measures are essential steps in maintaining a safe and productive plant environment.

The Real Dangers of Industrial Dusting

Even a small accumulation of dust can present a hazard in processing environments. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) may cite facilities for combustible dust hazards under the General Duty Clause (Section 5(a)(1)), which requires employers to maintain a workplace free from recognized dangers.

While OSHA does not define a specific dust depth limit, it references NFPA guidelines suggesting that dust layers thicker than 1/32 inch (about the thickness of a paper clip) covering more than 5% of a room’s surface area can pose a significant explosion risk. This includes dust on beams, joists, ducts, and equipment surfaces.

The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) recently consolidated several combustible dust standards into NFPA 660: Standard for Combustible Dusts (2024). This unified standard replaces NFPA 654 and provides updated guidance for preventing fires and explosions related to combustible particulate solids. It also emphasizes reducing secondary dust explosions, which are often responsible for the most severe damage and injuries.

In addition to explosion risks, uncontrolled dust can:

• Create slip-and-fall hazards on coated surfaces.
• Impair visibility in work areas.
• Increase respiratory health risks for employees.

The message is clear: effective dust control is critical to ensuring safety, compliance, and reliable operations.

How Hapman Helps You Control Dust at the Source

The most effective way to minimize dust is to control it where it originates. Hapman offers a range of engineered dust mitigation solutions designed to capture and contain material before it becomes airborne.

Conveyors

Hapman’s Tubular Drag, Flexible Screw, and Vacuum conveyors feature sealed designs that confine materials throughout transport. When paired with dust hoods or collection systems at inlet and discharge points, these conveyors significantly reduce airborne dust and improve overall plant cleanliness.

Central Dust Collection Systems

Central dust collection systems are highly effective for large-scale processes, capturing and removing dust from the plant environment. However, they are typically best suited for extensive operations since they remove material from the process stream and can be more costly for smaller applications.

Point-of-Use Dust Collectors

Point-of-use dust collectors capture particulates directly at the source—where dust is most likely to form. Common applications include:

• Bag dumping stations for 20–50 lb. ingredient bags.
• Bulk bag unloaders handling 2,000-lb. bags.

These systems use cartridge filters and timed pulse-cleaning valves to return captured material to the process. By keeping dust localized and contained, they help maintain cleaner air, safer work conditions, and greater material efficiency.

A Smarter Approach to Safety and Profitability

Effective dust control is about more than compliance—it’s about creating a safer, more efficient operation. With Hapman’s engineered solutions, processors can reduce airborne dust, protect employees, and maintain consistent productivity across every shift.

The post Dust Control in Bulk Material Handling appeared first on Hapman.

Considerations When Handling Dry Ingredients

INTRODUCTION

Successful conveying and handling of dry ingredients requires much more input than understanding a material’s properties, the desired convey rate and distance. Today’s manufacturers are faced with tighter margins, leaner operations, shorter lead times and greater environmental concerns. Maintaining plant and worker safety is paramount.

DUST CONTROL

Dust control is a common challenge for most food manufacturers. And for good reason, dust threatens both plant and worker safety. Ignition resulting from electrostatic discharge, friction, hot surfaces or open flame are a constant concern. Depending upon the level of dust control required by the process, a number of equipment options are available when handling dry ingredients.

Conveying methods that move material en masse (such as tubular drag conveyors) can minimize dust. Because the tubular drag conveyor’s components come into contact with a smaller percentage of material compared to other conveying methods, it is less likely to create dust. Tubular Drag Conveyors also create less friction as the chain and flight mechanism moves the material at a relatively slow velocity.

When handling bags, dust collectors are an effective way to minimize dust and capture all ingredients for processing. Such systems can be configured to filter material down to 1 micron. Adding a bag compactor to these systems can extend dust control to the bag disposal process, as well as enhance operator efficiency. In addition, dust-tight connectors can be employed with bulk bag handling equipment to minimize dust entering the plant environment.

EQUIPMENT DESIGN AND MATERIAL CONSTRUCTION

Other factors to consider when handling dry food ingredients deal with the design of equipment and materials used in their construction. For example, does the process require sanitation or washdown? Will the ingredients flow in the same manner as it passes through the equipment? Is the material abrasive?

There is a wide array of options available to effectively meet sanitation standards, which may include various materials for construction and finishes. Likewise, materials for construction and the design of the conveyor or other equipment can reduce wear from abrasive materials.

EASY TO OPERATE

Operators who, in the past, may have focused in only one aspect of a process may now be responsible for multiple pieces of a process as manufactures seek productivity gains. To reduce training required and reduce errors that can result in wasted batches or operator injury, equipment should be intuitive and have safeguards. Programmable logic controls (PLC) help ensure batching consistency and maintain ease of use.

SUMMARY

Handling dry ingredients is more complex than simply moving product from point A to point B. Use of systems and processes that assure safe and efficient processing of materials are just as important. Options related to dust control, safety and efficiency are important considerations for food manufacturers handling dry ingredients.

The post Key Factors of Material Handling Equipment Design and Selection appeared first on Hapman.

A fully operational research laboratory needed a better way for technicians to remove and dispose of more than 1,200 pounds of soiled animal bedding per day.

CUSTOMER

Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, Bethesda, MD

INDUSTRY

Educational training facility for U.S. Military

BUSINESS BENEFITS REALIZED

Improved workflow with an ergonomic way to empty waste bedding from cages and feed material into the conveyor.
Provided odor control and eliminated potentially hazardous exposure to employees.

The Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, (USUHS), is located in Bethesda, MD and operates as a pathway to train, educate and prepare uniformed services health professionals, officers and leaders to directly support the Military Health System, the National Security and National Defense Strategies of the United States, and the readiness of the Armed Forces.

A DANGEROUS, HEAVY LOAD FOR LABORATORY WORKERS

The Center for Laboratory Animal Medicine (LAM) on the USUHS campus is a fully operational research laboratory. The technicians working on site had the enormous task of removing and disposing of over 400 pounds of dirty bedding in wheeled containers.

This manual process was performed three times per day, five days a week, and required two people standing at the discharge end of the cage dump area with plastic bags to catch the waste. The waste was then placed in a large plastic cart. When the cart was full, two people moved the container from the cage wash area to the dumpster. The open 400 pound cart was wheeled down a common area hall to a dumpster outside the facility. The dock upon which the workers stood to lift and dump the cart into the waste container was often wet and slippery during seasons of rain and snow, creating a hazardous work environment.

Another challenge with this process was the odor from the carts as they were rolled down the hall – leading to numerous complaints from students and faculty. In addition, there was great concern from LAM management about the potential exposure of zoonotic materials to people passing through the lab’s corridors.

NOT ALL CONVEYORS ARE CREATED EQUAL

Prior to the manual dumping procedures, the LAM used a vacuum conveying system for automated bedding removal. The system was removed several years after installation because of excessive downtime and maintenance. The vacuum conveying system was not designed to handle the waste bedding and would continually clog. The maintenance team at USUHS spent countless labor hours unclogging and fixing the conveyor, only to repeat the emergency repairs a short time later.

A CONVEYOR ENGINEERED SPECIFICALLY FOR HANDLING BEDDING

USUHS and the laboratory personnel knew a change had to be made to the labor intensive manual handling of the animal bedding. After some research of bedding handling systems, coupled with the previous failed experience with vacuum conveying, Aladino Robles, Chief of LAM’s facility operations found the tubular drag conveyor. The conveying technology, invented and manufactured by Hapman, is designed specifically to address the unique challenges of bedding handling. The Hapman bedding handling system included a cage dump station and tubular drag conveyor.

The cage dump station gave LAM workers an ergonomic way to empty waste bedding from cages and feed the soiled material directly into the conveyor. The conveyor – a sealed stainless steel tube that provides for odor control and elimination of potentially hazardous exposure from bedding transport – quietly moves the bedding from the lab area down the long 250 ft. corridor out to the bay area dump container.

The new system quickly improved working and environmental conditions within the facility. Robles noted, “We no longer openly move potentially unsanitary material through common areas, and our technicians don’t have to bear any heavy weight while carefully navigating the loading docks.” The animal laboratory at USUHS has seen the value in the Hapman bedding handling system in just three short months. Robles enthusiastically commented, “We move up to 1,200 pounds of animal bedding per day. This system is a great purchase for LAM and the university.”

For more information on customizable Hapman bedding disposal or bedding feed dispensing systems designed specifically engineered for vivarium applications e-mail sales@hapman.com, or visit www.hapman.com.

The post Uniformed Services University Health Science Center for Laboratory Animal Medicine Overcomes a Severe Bedding Handling Challenge appeared first on Hapman.

The facility, which manages over 55,000 rodent cages, needed a more reliable and cost effective way to dispose of waste bedding, as well as mitigate allergen exposure, and reduce physical injuries to employees due to repetitive lifting, bending and twisting.

CUSTOMER

The Laboratory Animal Resource Center (LARC), part of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF)

INDUSTRY

University Studies, and Biomedical Industry

BUSINESS BENEFITS REALIZED

– Increased productivity by streamlining workflow.
– Decreased allergen contamination to both workers and animals.
– Reduced costs and maintenance over previous system.

The Laboratory Animal Resource Center (LARC) is part of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and is a predominate, ethical, and humane contributor to university studies and findings, as well as the biomedical industry as a whole. UCSF’s exceptional group of investigative teams in biological, clinical, social, behavioral and population sciences continues to discover new solutions for preventing and treating a wide array of diseases.

THE FINANCIAL REALITY OF LABORATORY OPERATION

The LARC is responsible for the reproduction, care, health, and well- being of thousands of research rodents. The research is supported mostly by grants, supplemented by university operational budgets. Recharges to the research accounts of the faculty laboratories support 90% of the operating costs of this large-scale animal husbandry and research facility. This financial reality is a driving factor behind continuous improvements and cost saving initiatives supported by the management and staff at the LARC.

“MANUAL BEDDING HANDLING IS NOT SAFE FOR WORKERS OR ANIMALS.” – Cliff Roberts, LARC Director

The LARC manages over 55,000 rodent cages across several buildings on the USCF campus. The central facility is the largest, holding 27,000 cages. This high volume, expansive facility means there are many challenges related to material handling of animal bedding.

At the central facility, waste animal bedding was manually handled and disposed of in an outside central compactor. Workers would remove the cages from racks that were wheeled into the cage wash area. The waste bedding was emptied into wheeled trash containers. When the wheeled trash container was full, workers had to interrupt their normal work flow, and wheel the open container down a long, central corridor to the outside. The trash container then had to be manually dumped into the compactor.

Once empty, the wheeled trash container was pushed back down the corridor to the cage wash area so more cages could be emptied. This process caused several major concerns for the LARC:

Interruption of work flow

Each time the trash bins were filled, the workers had to stop the cage cleaning process to empty the wheeled bins in the outside compactor. This took time and focus away from important tasks.

Worker ergonomics

The lifting, bending, and twisting required for the manual cage emptying and dumping was not ergonomically safe for workers.

Allergens exposure

The process of dumping the bedding into the container and wheeling the open container through the corridor left workers and animals susceptible to exposure to allergens.

FINDING A BETTER SOLUTION

Cliff Roberts, Director of the LARC, knew he needed to overcome the material handling challenges that existed in his facility. He also knew not all conveying systems could effectively handle the waste bedding. Roberts explains, “We have vacuum conveying systems in some of our lab buildings. While they can move some types of bedding effectively, where they struggle is with other items that accidentally get entrained in the bedding and put into the conveyor. These items can range from enrichment items, to gloves, or to ID tags”. Cliff and his facilities management team knew they needed to seek a robust, versatile means of conveying animal bedding if they were going to overcome the current material handling concerns and improve the effectiveness of their operations.

While researching the available options, Cliff found the Hapman bedding system. The Hapman waste bedding removal system consists of a cage dump station that feeds a tubular drag conveyor.

The tubular drag technology, invented by Hapman, uses an industrial chain and flight assembly, and a patented auto- tension system to effectively move any type of bedding and miscellaneous materials without fail. The tubular drag runs with a motorized drive pulling the chain assembly through an enclosed tube. The patented auto- tension system keeps the appropriate tension on the chain, accommodating varying loads, objects, and material density thus significantly reducing the need for adjustment. The system is quiet, and engineered to run down long corridors, above drop ceilings, through walls, and around bends. The flexible layout options make the system ideal for Vivariums because of the space considerations, low noise requirements, and minimal maintenance. The cage dump station could be equipped with an optional HEPA filter exhaust, which would help LARC with the allergen concerns. Cliff believed he found the automated bedding handling system he needed.

SAVING MONEY AND IMPROVING OPERATIONS

In 2011, the first of two Hapman waste bedding removal systems was installed at the LARC. The purchase and installation was conducted as part of a facility upgrade and expansion project.

Getting the Hapman system to fit into the project budget was relativity easy. Roberts noted, “The tubular drag waste bedding system was less expensive than the vacuum system, both from a capital cost and operating cost perspective. The fact that the tubular drag conveyor offers less maintenance than our vacuum systems, and less strain and risk to the facility workers over our manual processes, made the decision to purchase the Hapman systems easy.”

The operational process for bedding management improved at the LARC building where the Hapman bedding systems are operating. The workers empty cages into a cage dump station with a filtered exhaust. The cage is then placed on the tunnel wash conveyor while the bedding is automatically moved down the long corridor in a sealed environment. The waste is dumped into the compactor without any strain on the workers or unnecessary exposure.

Productivity has increased and workflow processes improved with the elimination of the manual dumping. Cliff summarizes, “Our goal was to improve operations while also reducing costs. Capital and operating budgets are limited so I needed to be sure the upgrades to our facility were going to pay off. The installations of the Hapman bedding systems have helped us to achieve our operating, improvement, and cost reduction goals.”

For more information on customizable Hapman bedding disposal or bedding feed dispensing systems designed specifically engineered for vivarium applications e-mail sales@hapman.com, or visit www.hapman.com.

The post The University of California San Francisco, Laboratory Animal Resource Center (LARC) Finds Significant Cost Savings in Effective Handling of Waste Bedding Material appeared first on Hapman.

CHALLENGE

A biotech lab needed an easy and dependable method to handle dirty animal bedding from cages.

SOLUTION

A Hapman tubular drag conveyor with a specialized dump hopper. The cages are dumped upside-down into the specialized, ventilated dump station. The dumped dirty bedding falls into the tubular drag conveyor inlet, to be conveyed through the existing building and out to a waste collection compactor for disposal. The cage then moves, via powered rollers, into the washer and dryer. It is then refilled with new bedding and moved back to the lab. The conveyor was easily able to handle the lab animal bedding materials along with any miscellaneous items that found their way into the system.

RESULT

The tubular drag conveyor proved to be a perfect material handling device for this application. It efficiently conveyed the lab animal bedding materials and its flexible circuit shape allowed it to fit through the existing building. It is also totally enclosed for safe handling of hazardous material disposal.

The post Biotech Lab Handling Dirty Mice Bedding From Cages with Cleaning Disposal System appeared first on Hapman.