Smooth, burr-free machine components are critical for manufacturing and packaging food products without contamination risks. Conventional production methods often result in rough surfaces and burrs, which can harbor residues and microorganisms. This not only compromises food safety but also increases cleaning efforts, downtime, and costs. Additionally, manual post-processing rarely achieves consistent quality and poses a higher risk of injury.

The Stream Finishing Process offers automated, highly precise, and ultra-clean surface finishing. Components are rotated and immersed in a medium containing grinding or polishing agents, resulting in extremely smooth, easy-to-clean surfaces with roughness values as low as Ra 0.01 μm—even for complex geometries or parts weighing up to 200 kg. Components treated with this method provide minimal opportunities for contamination or microbial growth, enhancing product safety and equipment availability.

Key benefits of these automated processes include easier cleaning of equipment components, reduced lubricant consumption, lower friction, and significantly extended service life. Production efficiency increases while waste and downtime are minimized, ensuring that surfaces of conveyor systems, dosing, packaging, and sealing equipment meet the highest cleanliness standards.

For the most demanding applications, particularly in hard-to-reach or finely structured areas, the Electro Finishing Process is an ideal complement. This method uses electrolytic material removal to achieve mirror-smooth, metallically pure, and completely burr-free surfaces. A significant advantage of Electro Finishing is its ability to create biocompatible surfaces, which is especially important for food and pharmaceutical applications, ensuring the safety and compatibility of treated components. Even intricate and complex geometries are optimally processed, significantly improving cleanability and resistance to contamination.

COMPONENTS FOR THE FOOD INDUSTRY

As a manufacturer, you benefit from components refined with the highest precision and stateof- the-art surface finishing. Our processes provide technical and hygienic optimization for the following parts, ensuring sustainable support for your production operations

CONVEYOR SCREWS

Our Stream Finishing and Electro Finishing Processes deliver flawless, micro-smooth surface structures and cleanly rounded edges. Surface roughness is significantly reduced, ensuring optimal material flow. Adhesion of conveyed materials is minimized, drastically reducing abrasion and material wear. The improved surface structure actively prevents contamination and supports compliance with the highest hygiene standards. Additionally, the service life of conveyor screws is significantly extended, and maintenance intervals are reduced due to increased wear resistance, leading to sustainable efficiency improvements in your production processes.

SEAMING ROLLS (FOR CAN CLOSURES)

Modern polishing and smoothing techniques create homogeneous, wear-resistant surfaces with optimized friction reduction. Surface roughness is minimized, ensuring smooth and uninterrupted operation during continuous use. This not only lowers energy consumption but also significantly reduces lubricant requirements. The enhanced surface quality minimizes wear and extends the lifespan of seaming rolls, improving the efficiency of your production lines, reducing downtime, and increasing overall cost-effectiveness in the sealing process.

MOLDS FOR CLOSURE CAPS

Finely polished mold walls ensure residue-free and consistently precise demolding of closure caps. Techniques such as electrochemical polishing and vibratory finishing optimize surface structures, effectively preventing material deposits and deformation. This results in consistently high product quality and reduced waste. The improved surface properties of the molds also minimize cleaning efforts and increase service life, making your production processes more efficient and cost-effective.

CHOCOLATE MOLDS

Mirror-smooth molds enable effortless and clean demolding of pralines, bars, and other chocolate products. Reduced surface roughness minimizes chocolate adhesion, elevating the appearance of your final products while significantly reducing material waste. The improved surface quality also simplifies mold cleaning, enhancing efficiency and hygiene throughout the production chain. This is particularly crucial for meeting stringent quality and hygiene standards in the food industry. Additionally, our processes leave no residues on the surface, ensuring the quality and cleanliness of your products.

VALVE AND DOSING COMPONENTS

Even for complex and intricate contours, such as those found in valves and dosing elements, our precise finishing processes ensure uniform smoothing, even in hard-to-reach areas. Techniques like surface densification and subsequent high-gloss polishing produce components with significantly reduced adhesion tendencies and optimized flow behavior. The improved surface structure contributes to excellent hygiene properties, which are particularly critical in the food and pharmaceutical industries. These features enhance process reliability and simplify cleaning, making your production processes more efficient and dependable.

BRASS AND STAINLESS STEEL DIES

Our specially developed finishing processes for brass and stainless steel dies ensure exceptionally smooth, burr-free surfaces with defined edge rounding. Precision polishing and grinding technologies significantly extend the durability of dies, even under intensive use. The defined edges and optimized surface quality ensure precise impressions and minimize the risk of material adhesion. This not only simplifies die cleaning but also supports compliance with the highest hygiene standards. These properties are essential for food production, where quality and safety are top priorities.

OTEC’s Stream Finishing and Electro Finishing Technologies enable precise, material-friendly, and efficient post-processing of a wide range of components for the food and packaging industries. Customers benefit from tailored process development at the OTEC Finishing Center, ensuring the selection of optimal methods for specific part geometries and surface quality requirements.