Flat top chains for beverage industry
Chain specialist iwis introduced its 
hardened, wear-resistant stainless steel flat top chains at this year’s Drinktec in Munich, Germany. Sold under the Flexon brand, the chains can be used for conveying bottle crates and returnable bottles. They are also surface-hardened with a special process to reduce wear and maintenance costs.
Flat top chains consist of plates that are connected to each other with single and double hinged joints. This design allows the construction of chains with a width of up to 305mm for both straight-line and curved tracks, onto which the products can be directly placed. Crates and reusable bottles place an exceptionally high strain on the chains, and foreign matter – such as sand, glass, string and other dirt – also increase chain wear. Consequently, the chains need to be replaced more frequently throughout the plant’s service life, with the resulting replacement chain and additional maintenance costs cutting into production profits.
“With wear-resistant chains, the extreme wear traditionally suffered by crate conveying chains is a thing of the past. This, of course, also cuts production costs”, explains Frank Rasch, flat top chain manager at iwis. “In terms of reduced maintenance, carbon steel chains hardened to about 45 HRC have a clear advantage over stainless steel chains. But because they rust, carbon steel chains are unsuitable for handling beverages. To date, chains made from cold-rolled stainless steel with a hardness of about 27 HRC have been used here. Although suitable also for bottling plants, their low hardness means that they have a much shorter lifespan than hardened carbon steel chains; a fact that had to be accepted until now.”
With its Flexon flat top chains, iwis believes that it now has a solution to this problem: the combination of stainless steel and a hardened surface of up to 67 HRC unites the advantages of carbon steel and cold-rolled stainless steel in a single material. The result is rustproof, exceptionally wear-resistant chains. Iwis can supply hardened stainless steel versions of all flat top chains currently in use, so that existing plants can be retrofitted with the new chains without needing to be modified in any way.
