If stainless steel materials are not treated correctly, many problems can occur. Packo Surface Treatment, part of Packo Inox and the Verder Group, is specialized in the treatment of stainless steel. The company from Diksmuide offers a wide range of finishes: electropolishing, micro-undulation, amorphizing, deblurring, micro-deburring, blasting, grinding and polishing, pickling and passivation. In recent years, the surface finisher has observed some remarkable evolutions in stainless steel machining, such as the switch from non-stick coatings to non-stick electrochemical surface transformations and the move toward overhauling and upgrading existing systems.
Packo Surface Treatment started in 1974 with the electrolytic polishing of stainless steel parts for milking machines. Ammonia and chlorine caused corrosion of the stainless steel in milking parlors after only a few weeks. Electrochemical polishing solved the problem of corrosion and cleanability all at once. In the meantime, the company is active in a wide variety of sectors and the possible surface treatments have also expanded significantly to include de-rouging, refurbishment, de-blurring, micro-undulation, non-fingerprint finishing, E-polidur hardening, pickling, blasting and coating. If a customer has a problem, in many cases a solution is already known to Packo.
In recent years, however, there have been some curious evolutions in stainless steel mechanical engineering. For example, in the food industry, non-stick coatings are giving way to non-stick electrochemical surface treatments, such as micro-undulation, amorphization and electropolishing. In each of these cases, the surface remains the stainless steel itself. Thus, there are no coatings coatings, which by definition detach from the stainless steel and enter the food.
"At Packo, we have developed suitable solutions for a wide variety of applications. For example, for the bakery sector we have perfected a micro-undulation procedure that offers excellent non-stick properties in dough applications. For baking trays, we want to replace coatings with a metal-like finish. Furthermore, electropolishing and amorphizing have long prevented clogging in applications involving flour, flour and other powders," says manager Piet Heinrichs. "Electropolishing is also increasingly being chosen for installations in meat processing plants. This avoids sticking, guarantees easy cleaning and prevents biofilm and fouling, contamination and bacterial growth. In applications involving starch, such as potatoes, mashed potatoes and cereals, we work with amorphization because of its anti-stick properties, and in filling installations for drinking water, it is impossible to imagine a situation without amorphization. In rubber and latex applications, micro-ondulation is just about the only anti-adhesive treatment to date that offers adequate results."
A second remarkable trend is due to the reduced supply of spare parts and finished products. As a result, in the pharmaceutical and food industries, more and more used and second-hand equipment is being used, making the overhaul and upgrading of stainless steel equipment very much more important. "At Packo Surface Treatment, we have the knowledge and technologies to repair damage and wear on products. Every day we receive vessels, reactors, mixers, filters, pumps and dosing sluices. We replace couplings, grind and weld scratches, repair wear and corrosion, passivate or electropolish. Thus, in a very short time and at limited cost, the customer gets a part that in the end is sometimes better than a new product," Heinrichs points out. "In their first life, a lot of the devices used did not have a high-quality finish, but treatments such as electropolishing, amorphizing or micro-undulation are almost always applied during an overhaul. The almost improbable advantages of these finishes in terms of cleanability, anti-sticking, bacteria resistance and corrosion protection are now so well known that they have become a matter of course in many applications."