At Sure Flow Equipment, we are very proud of all of our quality industrial valves and strainers, but we take particular pride in some of our custom fabricated ones. They offer practical solutions to industrial challenges, are manufactured to the highest quality, and well, we just think of them of as works of art … in an nouveau-industrial kind of way.
We thought we’d highlight a few of them just so you can see the variety and range of our capabilities.
This is an 8” x 12” DB150LT dual basket strainer. It is constructed from low temperature carbon steel. It is to be used in an environment where it will be exposed to extreme weather and cold temperatures.
When you look at the image you might think we forgot one of the butterfly valves used to isolate one strainer, and divert to the other during clean out. The 4th butterfly valve is actually on the reverse side because of where the unit was to be installed. If you ever have an application where you see limitations please call us, because we just see challenges and opportunities.
Some of our dual basket assemblies have butterfly valves that are actually connected with a rod. This basically ensures complete control over the process and is usually used where it is essential that flow continue, so that when you isolate one strainer for clean out, flow must be diverted to the other side. With this unit the butterflies are independent. With the torque requirements in this installation, it would be difficult for the gear operator to be physically move both valves simultaneously.
This is a BW150 cone bottom basket strainer which is 30” x 42”. It includes a davit assembly for easy cover removal. With its support legs, it stands 13 feet high and weighs over 7,000 lbs. Sure Flow custom fabricated two of these units with a rush timeline to meet the customer’s deadline.
The units were lined with a ½” layer of hard rubber for extreme abrasive wear from the ore slurry product being strained.
Fabricating the units was the first challenge, then crating and preparing the units for shipping was the second. We fabricated the custom shipping crates and they arrived in perfect working order on the other side of the planet from our manufacturing facility.
This unit above is a custom designed backwash strainer, designed for service where the media is a sticky substance. The media can be backwashed with a hot solvent which can be recovered, and reused. The application is for pre-straining a continuous cycle production cooling system with high volumes of process materials.
This new unit is expected to increase the time between cleanings of the primary system, from every 4 hours to every other day. This will greatly reduce the demand on the maintenance staff during normal production runs. As is so often the case with the innovative products we develop, they are not an ‘expense’ but actually an ‘investment’ in efficiency and savings in time, materials and money. In addition to time savings, waste filter bags will also be reduced, for additional economies of the process.
These units are custom fabricated DBH 316 stainless steel duplex strainers. These 3” x 8” duplex strainers include hinged covers for convenient access for cleaning. They have isolating stainless steel ball valves. The strainers use 5/32” stainless steel perf baskets and 120 stainless steel mesh lining. They were created for a high capacity application at a chemical company.
So, what do you think?
We think these units are attractive not just because of the time and effort we’ve put into them, but because of their functionality, each fulfilling a critical part of a production process, increasing efficiency. Like all great works of art our staff put hundreds of hours into every one of these units and there’s always an excitement in the air when one is complete and has been tested and is loaded on a truck for shipment to the customer.
They may not rank up there with the Mona Lisa in terms of artistic merit, but then again, the Mona Lisa never made an industrial process more efficient and therefore benefited the average person who lives in the modern world. I guess it’s all just in how you look at the picture.