Food & Beverage

Long lasting in washdown

✅ Chemical washdown is the hardest condition for industrial equipment to survive in. This presents a huge challenge in the food and beverage industry as equipment can often break causing downtime on machinery and incurs large replacement costs. The most common failure mode is water ingress causing electrical failures.

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✅ The Hygienic Guard Lock (HGL) has been designed to be not only hygienic but also out of stainless steel and rated to IP69 with FDA approve seals. We have found from customer trials that it lasts on average 8-10 times longer in washdown environments compared to other interlocking brands. ​

No electrical failures with mechanical safety​

✅ The most common failure mode in the food and beverage industry is water ingress causing electrical failures.

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✅ Fortress stainless mGard trapped key range can be ideal in this environment, the lack of any electrical parts means that breakages occur much less often than its electromechanical counterparts. Of course this also means you don’t need any cabling or a Safety PLC for this kind of a safety system to work.​

Less downtime​

✅ Our interlocks are built to last, our Hygienic range has undergone 5,000,000 cycles in testing to ensure they last, even in harsh environments with lots of use. 

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✅ The Hygienic Guard Lock (HGL) has been designed to be not only hygienic but also out of stainless steel and rated to IP69 with FDA approve seals. We have found from customer trails that it last on average 8-10 times longer in washdown environuts compared to other interlocking brands. 

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✅ Even if you have inhouse spares, a machine being down for an hour while units are replaced can have significant costs so the longer they last the better.​

Whole body access protection without presence sensing​

✅ Ensuring you prevent unexpected start up is vital as someone maintaining or fixing a machine can be put in a lot of danger if this occurs. Presence sensing is often used for these environments to make sure machinery is not restarted while someone is in a hazardous space, however in the food and beverage industry ensuring this expensive equipment is not damaged by washdown can be a challenge.

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✅ This makes Fortress’ extracted personnel (or safety) key a great solution for food and beverage applications, the hazardous space cannot be accessed until a key has been removed from a Fortress’ interlock, this will then prevent the machine from being restarted while the operator has the personnel key with them.

Safety systems for large machinery applications with no PLC​

✅ Often large machinery, such as industrial mixers or blenders, are not controlled by a PLC but is turned off and on using a large isolator when access is required. Other sources of energy may also need to be controlled before access.

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✅ Trapped key systems allow complex logic to take place without a computer system, hazardous energy can be shut down in a specified sequence and used to obtain access to a hazardous space.

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✅ Stainless steel trapped key interlocks can be used for washdown environments, with no electrical parts they can operate at high or low temperatures as well as having a much lower failure rate there is not electronics for water to damage. ​

Save on wiring by Daisy-chaining multiple access points​

✅The Hygienic Guard lock comes with OOSD so you don’t have to worry about fault masking when daisy-chaining units together. 

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✅ Networked Fortress products can reduce any cable runs by large amounts and help save commissioning and installation time. Daisy chaining our connected products further saves on these costs.​