Custom Designed Bunting Plate Magnets For Italy

The export order was valued at over £50,000 and was the result of close cooperation between the Bunting Europe engineering team based in Berkhamsted in the UK and the Italian customer’s engineers.

Plate Magnets are a simple form of Magnetic Separator with blocks of magnets magnetically arranged inside a rugged stainless steel fabricated housing to project a magnetic field on the flat surface of the plate. The projected magnetic field captures both fine ferrous contamination and larger pieces of tramp ferrous metal from various types of free flowing material (including powdery, moist, lumpy, and abrasive products through to large material that might choke, bridge, or cause rapid wear in Magnetic Cartridge or Tube based separators).

For the Italian project, the objective was to remove tramp ferrous metal contamination from tobacco to protect damage to delicate and expensive cutter blades. The product flow was poor with a high moisture content and so a Plate Magnet was the best suited design of Magnetic Separator for the application. Due to specific application requirements, the Plate Magnet was custom designed to produce a specific shape and intensity of magnetic field. Each Plate Magnet had a face of 600mm by 130mm with a depth of 45mm and weighed approx. 50kgs.

These were the largest Plate Magnets manufactured in the UK by Bunting. The custom design, using high-energy rare earth magnets, meant that a peak magnetic field of over 10,000 gauss was produced on the surface, which was flat as recommended for low density product flows, inverted installations and sanitary applications.

The Plate Magnets were positioned inside chutes and due to the size and weight of each unit, the customer required each one to be self-cleaning, whereby any captured metal would be automatically removed and discarded. The self-cleaning design requires a counter plate to be placed against the surface of the Plate Magnet. During the self-cleaning process, both the counter plate and the main body of the Plate Magnet is pulled away from the chute then the counter plate is pulled away from the main body. Any magnetically entrapped material is held against the counter plate and becomes demagnetized as the Plate Magnet moves away allowing the ferrous material to falls away into a discharge collection area.

The 12 identical Plate Magnets were designed, manufactured and despatched within 9 weeks. The size, weight and magnetic strength of each Plate Magnet dictated that each unit had to be packed separately for shipment to Italy.

Jake Hall, Bunting’s Export Sales Manager, explained how Bunting secured the order. “Being flexible and having the engineering capabilities in Europe to custom design the Plate Magnet for the client was vitally important. Ultimately, that was the deciding factor.”

Bunting Magnetics Europe Ltd is a major UK exporter of Magnetic Separation equipment and Magnets with customers located globally.