Sanitary Conveyors

Saturn Sanitary Conveyors are designed for food processing and packaging environments where equipment must withstand frequent cleaning while providing improved accessibility, drainage and hygienic construction.

Rather than using a single sanitary design for every application, Saturn offers four construction packages: Washdown, Sanitary Level 1, Sanitary Level 2 and Sanitary Level 3. This allows the conveyor construction to be matched to the product, cleaning procedure and sanitation requirements of each area of the production line.

All packages begin with a conveyor designed for a wet washdown environment, incorporating stainless steel construction and washdown-rated drive components. Each sanitary level progressively adds features intended to improve accessibility, reduce potential accumulation points and simplify cleaning.

This tiered approach is commonly used in food conveyor design because a conveyor carrying sealed packages does not necessarily require the same hygienic construction as equipment directly handling exposed meat, dairy or other unpackaged food products.

Sanitary Level 1 introduces additional hygienic design features including SS304 #4 stainless steel construction, removable UHMW carryway strips, stand-offs between components and the frame, spaced sanitary bearings, minimized horizontal surfaces and water-exit openings. These features improve visibility and access to areas that would otherwise be difficult to inspect and clean.

Sanitary Level 2 further improves cleanability with a welded frame assembly, machined grooved UHMW carryways and continuous sanitary welds in critical areas, reducing joints and potential product accumulation areas.

Sanitary Level 3 incorporates the Level 1 and Level 2 features while extending welded construction to the conveyor support structure and legs, minimizing bolted connections and providing Saturn’s highest sanitary construction package.

Features such as open construction, stand-offs, minimized horizontal surfaces, accessible belt supports and continuous welds are established hygienic-design principles because they improve cleaning access and reduce areas where water or product can collect.

Depending on the application, conveyors can also incorporate open modular belts, homogeneous belts, belt lift mechanisms, lift-up idler tails, drip pans and CIP spray systems to further simplify sanitation. Tool-less belt access, belt lifts and CIP systems are commonly incorporated into sanitary food conveyors to reduce cleaning and maintenance time.

Saturn Sanitary Conveyors are custom manufactured in the required width, length, height and conveyor configuration and can be designed as horizontal, incline, decline, curve or other application-specific layouts.

They can be supplied as standalone equipment or integrated with food processing machinery, checkweighers, metal detectors, X-ray systems, packaging equipment and complete sanitary production lines.