If you like to eat foods such as nut butters, chips, cereal, pie fillings, sauces, and spreads, have you ever wondered how their ingredients are processed to make your favorite treats? Learn how a Kennametal Stellite 6K solution enables a leading food processing equipment manufacturer to provide its customers with the best milling and reduction capabilities in the industry.
Proven Solution: Stellite™ 6K Food Processing Blades
Process & General Industry Case Study
July 20, 2023
The Challenge
An industry-leading size reduction equipment manufacturer produces high-speed milling and comminuting machines for a wide range of food items. Its customers use the machines to quickly mill/puree, liquefy, granulate, and crumble raw ingredients. Their cutting heads require thin blades that are made from food-grade material and possess excellent edge retention. The cutting heads’ blades also must withstand corrosion resulting from the processing of certain foods. Additionally, the blades must be strong enough to stand up to high-speed impacts from solid ingredients like nuts or hard candy.
To meet customer demands for consistent, long-life cutting quality, the manufacturer needed the blades to be made from something more durable than stainless steel. That’s when it turned to Kennametal Stellite.
The Kennametal Solution
Kennametal Stellite supplied the equipment manufacturer with Stellite 6K blades. Stellite 6K is produced by an extensive hot forging process. This specially formulated material provides outstanding performance in even the harshest cutting applications. What’s more, Stellite 6K blades remain sharp and can last significantly longer than steels in challenging cutting conditions.
Stellite 6K blades in the cutting heads allow for precision particle size reduction down to microdimensions. Customers can use the comminuting machines for a wide variety of food processing operations in which ingredients require granulating, flaking, milling, shredding, liquefying, emulsifying, and pureeing. Common applications include:
- Granulating spices, baking ingredients, and candies
- Processing meat into slurries for nutritional supplements
- Milling vegetables for juices
- Pureeing for flavor in yogurt and ice cream
- Reducing beef and pork for sausage production
- Reducing fruits and vegetables for purees
- Reducing meat for pet food production
- Reducing peppers for hot sauces
Proven Capabilities
Kennametal Stellite offers custom-manufactured components and hardfacing materials for conversion industries in which high temperatures, wear, and corrosion can limit component life and lead to expensive downtime. Stellite’s proven capabilities make it ideal for a broad range of process industries, including:
- Food
- Glass
- Lumber
- Plastic and rubber
- Pulp and paper
- Steel
To explore the full line of Stellite alloys, visit our Alloys page.
