Traditionally, maintenance for lump breakers – also known as flake breakers or lump crushers – meant removing heavy end plates with the help of specialized tooling. Operators or maintenance staff had to pull off the end plate and remove a rather unwieldy rotor to clean the machine. Then the whole process needed to be reversed precisely to return the machine to normal operation. This resulted in significant downtime whenever the lump breaker required cleaning or other maintenance.
Inspired by Prater’s Quick-Take-Apart series of rotary airlock valves, the Quick Clean Lump Breaker was designed by our in-house engineers to make maintenance simpler and safer. Accessing the end plates and direct drive without needing tools saves considerable time cleaning or maintaining a lump breaker. Designed to reduce downtime and optimize production, the Quick Clean Lump Breaker features latches and a sliding rail system on which the end plates are mounted. No other manufacturer offers such a sublime lump breaker design to allow quick access to the machine’s innards.
Prater’s Quick-Clean Lump Breaker Design
By reducing downtime, the Quick Clean Lump Breaker increases safety while improving product flow for various applications. The Quick-Clean Lump Breaker’s design makes it capable of processing a wide variety of materials, including ash, boron, dog biscuits, fertilizer, non-dairy creamer, potassium, resin flakes, rubber, and salt. This Prater lump breaker design is ideal for recycling or waste disposal applications.
Elements of Prater’s Quick-Clean Lump Breaker design include:
- Allowing for fewer moving parts without pinch points
- Breaking lumps and improving product flow for various applications
- Economically reducing compressed material
- Enabling easy replacement of both fixed and rotating blades
- Enhancing ergonomics through the incorporation of rail within lump breaker design
- Featuring a robust single-shaft rotor
- Installing and maintaining more easily due to low profile lump breaker design
- Limiting agglomeration that occurs naturally or during transportation
- Making the addition of air purge seals easier with already drilled holes
- Permitting access for maintenance and cleaning without tools.
- Reducing a wide range of lump sizes without generating dust or degrading product
- Reducing time and cost of maintenance
Able to incorporate Prater’s airlocks, the Quick-Clean Lump Breaker also comes in various sizes and can operate under a silo or inline. Material is fed through the top, entering the chamber where the rotor reduces it before conveying product on to the next stage of production.
Maintenance & Cleaning of Prater’s Quick-Clean Lump Breaker
This lump breaker design features easy-to-grip handles that, once removed, allow access to the rotor via a steel door in the front part of the machine. With the Quick-Clean rail design, the operator can pull the lump breaker’s door open and slide the whole assembly smoothly out, enabling easy cleaning and maintenance of the rotor. Once outside the lump breaker’s body, it’s easy to thoroughly clean the cracks and crevices between the rotor’s blades and spacers.
The screen within the rotor chamber slides easily out and can even be separated completely from the equipment to simplify cleaning. Fingers within the rotor chamber can be removed and cleaned separately as well. This also allows maintenance personnel to clean the inside of the chamber more thoroughly.
The Quick-Clean lump breaker design is perfect for production lines that work with multiple products. This makes it an excellent piece of equipment for food processing applications, enabling the operator to easily, quickly, and thoroughly cleanse the entire machine. This prevents cross-contamination and the possibility of leftover material rotting within the equipment.
Lump Breaker Screen Change & Reassembly
These steps show how to change the Quick-Clean Lump Breaker’s screens and reassemble the machine:
- Once clean, position the screen so that it can slide into its proper position.
- Slide the screen back into rotor chamber below the fingers.
- Make sure there are no spaces between the screen and the back of the rotor chamber.
- This will ensure that the screen is fully engaged to the back wall of the chamber, which keeps coarse material from getting through during operation.
- If the screen doesn’t engage fully, tap it gently towards the back until it’s flush with the back wall.
- Slide the rotor back into chamber along rails, ensuring the rotors won’t come into contact with fingers during operation.
- Once door is fully closed, reattach handles and make sure they fit tightly.
Changing Lump Breaker Blades & Spacers
To understand how to change the blades and spacers on the Quick-Clean Lump Breaker, follow these instructions:
- With the rotor slid out from the chamber on the Quick-Clean Lump Breaker’s rails, the rotor’s blades and spacers are easily accessible.
- Two locking collars hold the blades in place, one at the front of the rotor and one at the back.
- The back collar stays in place, while the front collar can move to adjust spacing.
- If the configuration is to be the same, markings should be made to ensure blades and spacers go back exactly to how they were previously.
- Once configured for the application, the front collar should be locked down before returning the rotor to the chamber.
Prater’s Quick-Clean Lump Breaker design can be easily customized to adjust the number of blades and spacers, depending on how fine the material produced must be. Contact our expert technicians today to learn more about Prater’s Quick-Clean Lump Breaker design and whether it’s the best equipment for your application.
