Calling all GAI Filler/Capper users

[reno-jazz]

Looks like you are looking for an "extreme pressure" oil.

Here's a link to a data sheet for the BP Energol: http://www.minaco.ba/bp/bp_pdf/TL%20...ol%20GR-XP.pdf

Call Grainger on the phone--they stock far more than I can ever find in their on-line catalog, and are very good at cross-referencing exotic (GAI) lubricants. They set me up with a food-grade grease with all the same specs as the GAI spec'd Paraliq or Klubersynth for ~$10/tube instead of $50!

Hey Timm,

Mind sharing the Grainger part numbers for whatever grease Grainger recommended? I've talked to my local branch and they can't seem to find anything.

Cheers,
Jazz Aldrich
Great Basin Brewing Co.

[TGTimm]

I'll see if I can find it. I think I still have the box around....

[TheSonofHops]

Lubrication Recommendations

Hey All,
I've been lurking around for the last year since taking over as Packaging Manager at Northern United Brewing Co in Dexter, MI. We run both a GAI 3003A-BIER (clean beers) and a GAI 2005-TOP (sour beers). We also have a GAI 6050 labeler. Thanks so much for all the good tips and advice.

As for lubrication, I was looking into this recently and came up with the following from Dow Corning (MI based). Our GAI manual has the recommended lubrication as:
A-Kluber Vaslub P40
B-Kluber Paraliq GA351
C-Vanguard MolyGuard XR120

The equivalents that we came up with from Dow Corning were:
A-G4500 (aerosol spray; $17)
B-G4501 (H1 rated; For incidental food contact; $17) or 3451 (H2 rated; not for incidental food contact; $336)
C-HP300 (H1 rated; $593) or G1502 (H2 rated; $24)

The big price differences are based on either food rating or chemical resistance. I figure for C, I would get the cheaper G1502 since I would use it to lubricate the large rotational gears under the machine. For B, I thought I would get both and use the 3451 for the lifting pedestal rollers as they are exposed to cleaning chemicals coming out of the dummy bottles.

We are instituting a strict lubrication and maintenance schedule as we push the machine past the 3000bph range.

Matt Yohe
Packaging Manager
Northern United Brewing Co
Dexter, MI

[TGTimm]

Here are the lubes we use:

Food grade grease, for areas where there is a potential for contact with the bottles or product: Huskey Code2--EP Food Grade, NSF H-1--around $15/ tube. I think we sourced this from Grainger, but not sure.

Grease for gears, etc. below the table, where no product or bottle contact is possible--any high-grade, molybdenum or lithium-based grease--cheap, from a local auto or equipment supply store. These big gears take some serious pressure, so the highest grade, preferably moly-based grease.

Food-grade spray lube for guide rods on filler heads, pneumatic cylinder rods, etc: Clearco Mineral Oil Spray--don't recall the price, but not bad.

Lube for the chain that raises/lowers the filler head: Any good quality spray-on white lithium grease. You really don't want to replace this chain, so lube well and often.

Silicone spray for conveyor transfer tables, etc: 3M food-grade silicone spray.

Hope this helps--

[rleglise]

I had a good one figuring out the lubes we use.

At Cascade Brewing in Portland, we run a GAI 1301 for sour beers (vacuum filled, rather than counter pressure) and an OMBF wire hooder.

For grease on the GAI, I use:
A: Vaslub (though apparently mineral oil will do the trick to sub this one out)
B: Paraliq
C: Automotive lithium grease (the cheap but effective stuff)

Now the OMBF was a more difficult beast to tackle. Had to get a 5 gallon bucket of SAE 90 food grade gear lube from Grainger. Needless to say we'll never need to buy that again.

Anyway, good luck with the bottling and lube sourcing.

-Richard

[TGTimm]

Vacuum pump problems

So, I started adding de-foaming agent--silicone-based--to the vacuum recovery bucket. Works great, no more mountain of foam. I'm setting up an automatic dosing pump so we can forget about dosing during a run.

Now, the problem. Without the foam in the bucket, I can see that the discharge line from the pump--the little one at the top--that is supposed to be circulating water through the vacuum pump is not discharging water--in fact, it's pulling a vacuum. I tried reversing the lines--same thing.

Is it time to re-build the vacuum pump? Is it rebuildable?

[rleglise]

Now, the problem. Without the foam in the bucket, I can see that the discharge line from the pump--the little one at the top--that is supposed to be circulating water through the vacuum pump is not discharging water--in fact, it's pulling a vacuum. I tried reversing the lines--same thing.

Is it time to re-build the vacuum pump? Is it rebuildable?

Circulating water through the vacuum pump? You running a venturi loop to produce the vacuum on your machine? Or am I reading this wrong?

If you have a vacuum being pulled rather than water coming out of the discharge, my guess is that your water level is too low. But then again, GAI didn't put any water circulation in the 1301 so I may be way off base in my understanding of what you're looking at.

-Richard

[TGTimm]

The 3003 Bier uses a liquid ring vacuum pump for the double-pre-evac cycles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid-ring_pump

The cooling/sealing water is, I think, supposed to circulate from the recovery bucket/reservoir through the pump--but I may be wrong here. The bucket has two lines going to the face of the pump housing, one at the bottom of the bucket, fully immersed, the other at the top, above the water level. Since the bucket has always been entirely full (and over-flowing) with foam, I've not had a chance to see this upper line since we commissioned the machine ten years ago, so I'm not sure if there's supposed to be water running out of this line--but it makes sense there would be.

Guess I'll call Prospero....

[TheSonofHops]

Vacuum Pump Information...As Far As I Know

Hey Everyone.
I was watching some youtube videos on how liquid ring pumps work yesterday. Pretty interesting and I recommend it for the curious mind. The vacuum pump we have is an Elmo Rietschle 2BV2xxxxxxxx liquid ring pump. On the Elmo website, there are a few documents that talk about operation of the pump and detail replacement parts. Yes, it can be rebuilt. Is there a rebuild kit? I don't know. I have the documents on my computer if anyone wants them.

Anyway, I was talking to one of the techs at GAI and mentioned the crazy amount of foam in the vacuum bucket. He was shocked and said there should be little to no foam. After doing some investigating of the machine and thought exercises, I would have to agree with him. The vacuum pump is connected to each fill head via the slip ring on the bottom of the bowl. This preevacs the bottle (twice on our machine). There should be no foam in the vacuum line since there should be no foam in the bottle. What we found out here was that the bottle would preevac once, then be pressurized and then preevac again. The pressurize operation was blowing foam into the bottle that was then being sucked into the vacuum slip ring and thus into the vacuum pump. Why was that foam being blown into the bottle? The only other time that the pressure slip ring is in communication with the bottle is during the leveling process near the end of the filling turret. We found our leveling pressure to be lower than the counter pressure of the bowl thus beer was being driven, not back into the bowl, but up the leveling slip ring during the leveling process. At the next opening of that slip ring, the beer was blasted into the bottle and then sucked into the vacuum ring.

We also found we were cleaning our machine incorrectly. The circuit washing cleaning phase should be used to push water through the gas circuits (counter pressure, leveling and vacuum) cleaning them out. Product should not be in these lines but only gas. We did a thorough clean of our gas circuits, turned up our leveling pressure and have not had any issues with foam in our bottles or our vacuum pump reservoir.

As for the issue that Timm is describing, if he is sucking liquid through the pump output which normally dumps into the reservoir above the liquid level, then there is probably a seal issue. Again, referring to the parts list, it should be easy to get a new set of seals and replace them.

I'm happy to discuss any of this further with anyone. If you want to call, PM me for my number.

Matt Yohe
Packaging Manager
Northern United Brewing Co.

[TGTimm]

Since we don't seem to be communicating here, I'll have to reference some diagrams. I'd take some pictures, but I left my camera in the rig overnight, and it's currently thawing.

The instructions for the vacuum pump are here: https://www.google.com/search?q=Elmo...utf-8&oe=utf-8 second link from the top. Thanks, Matt--I couldn't read the date plate on our pump!

On pg. 3 is a diagram of the outside of the pump. Ours is the 2BV2 in the upper left. The port I've been referring to is labeled 5. The line from port 5, the anti-cavitation connection, is connected to a line that connects to the recovery bucket of the bottling line (so called as I don't speak Italian). In our case, this line connects above the liquid level in the bucket when filled to the overflow discharge pipe.

I'm guessing that this port should be covered with liquid, and that the location is an error in construction of our machine (of course, the Pros tech claims we've "dropped something", but the overflow pipe is welded in place). I've temporarily installed a short piece of tubing in the overflow pipe to raise the water level to above this port. I just hope that ten years of running with it uncovered hasn't resulted in erosion of our impeller due to cavitation. Our pump has always made a horrible noise on start-up (screaming), but the Pros. techs told us this was normal--now I'm skeptical.

It seems our 2006 model 3003A Bier is a transitional model between the manually-driven older models and the more refined newer ones, and the techs usually seem to be about as baffled as I when trouble-shooting it. Not having fluency in a common language doesn't help.

Matt--we've tried many combinations of pressures over the years, and arrived at the one we're using by trial-and-error. Our leveling pressure (as indicated by the gauges on the machine) is about 1/2 bar above the bowl pressure--as recommended.

Watching the machine yesterday, the foam appears to be coming out of the fill/leveling tubes during the first CO2 blow-down. The foam is in the tubes from the leveling and snifting cycles. The foam in the vacuum pump bucket has been a problem since day one, and none of the techs that have visited us (on our dime) has suggested it was anything but normal. A very small dose of silicone-based de-foamer has solved the problem, but if it's actually an operating problem, we could eliminate another process and cost.

Thanks--

[TheSonofHops]

Vacuum Pump Information...As Far As I Know (Part Deux)

I've attached a few photos of our vacuum pump and reservoir setup. As Timm indicated, our anti-cavitation line is also above the liquid level in the reservoir. I spoke with a tech associated with Elmo and they said the anti-cavitation works double duty. One is expelling excess liquid from the liquid ring as necessary but also pulling in fresh air when needed. I don't understand the fresh air part, but I work in a brewery not as an engineer. That information does make sense though for the placement of the anti-cavitation input on the reservoir as well as what Timm has seen with it pulling vacuum and what I have seen with liquid coming out of the port.

On a side note, there is a vacuum gauge before the vacuum pump. When operating, it normally reads -0.8 bar. It has spiked up to 0 bar when we had some issues with our vacuum pump, but after cleaning the circuit rings, it has maintained -0.8 bar.

Matt

[TGTimm]

Thanks, Matt. I read all the info I could find on the pump, and I think we've got everything set up properly. Our set-up is the same as yours, and I removed the extension I had on the drain pipe.

I recently replaced the vacuum gauge on ours with a new, calibrated gauge. We're pulling betwee-0.8 and -1 bar. Nice clouding in the bottles on pre-evac.

Another mod I made in interest of keeping the floor clean and dry: The lid is heavy enough to create a pretty high positive pressure within the bucket. This forces liquid out around that big pump discharge pipe, with its pathetic little rubber ring for a seal. I used silicone caulking to seal the pipe to the bucket, then drilled a few 1/2" holes in the lid to allow air to escape. No more leaking there--but a couple of the John Guest (push-fit) fittings need replacing now.

RE: the anti-cavitation port--I think that port draws air through a kind of PVV when the pump tries to dead-head, preventing cavitation from eroding the impeller. I think--the documentation isn't real clear, just to use it when trying to pull below -0.8 bar. Just what or how to hook it up to is left largely to the imagination.

[Jeremy Thompson]

Hey all. New here. Quick intro. Name is Jeremy, work for Brothers Craft Brewing. Recently took over duties of running our 3003a.

I've got tons of experience in industrial maintenance, specifically running/working on packaging equipment in the poultry industry. That said, I was kinda thrown into bottling line duties. It's a pretty simple machine, but at the same time, I wish I had a little more time training. 😁

I've ran it a few times since being on my own, mostly no issues. My question though, has anyone had the level sensor go out in the turrent/bowl? We had some issues yesterday morning and couldn't figure out what was going on, until we realized the bowl was all the way full (not halfway up sight glass like normal), yet still reading like 25%. We drained the bowl down to where it was about halfway up the sight glass and the machine was reading -1%, like it was empty. So that was our ah ha moment. We pulled the unit out of the bowl and notice little crack like marks in the coating on the tip of the sensor. It's a Vegacal 64 level sensor. Just curious if anyone else has had this issue? What did you do? Where did you find replacements that didn't cost an arm and a leg? Etc.

Thanks,
Jeremy

[TheSonofHops]

Vegacal 64

Hey Jeremy,
I have no idea why there would be cracks along the rod on this device? Maybe quick swings from hot to cold? But if the sensor is still making readings, then you might be able to continue using it after you go through a reprogramming? There is a manual for the sensor on the Vega website and within it details how to program the sensor. I have never done so myself so I can't speak to how easy/difficult or effective it is.

Matt

[Jeremy Thompson]

Hey Jeremy,
I have no idea why there would be cracks along the rod on this device? Maybe quick swings from hot to cold? But if the sensor is still making readings, then you might be able to continue using it after you go through a reprogramming? There is a manual for the sensor on the Vega website and within it details how to program the sensor. I have never done so myself so I can't speak to how easy/difficult or effective it is.

Matt

The little cracks are just on the ptfe coating on the rod. We're not positive that matters, but it's reading inaccurate. Not much on electronics, but our guess is beer is getting past the coating and directly on the rod and throwing off the signal. I'm thinking the calibration is taking in affect of the coating and since beer may be passing the coating that it's reading wrong. We're thinking of pulling the sensor back out and getting some ptfe heat shrink to cover that area. We also tried setting it to the minimum 6% fill this morning for giggles and it still fills the bowl up completely. One place says a replacement is $1,300 and another $4,200, so we're looking for all options.