For over 90 years, Kadant Johnson has been a leading provider of rotary joints, precision unions, and fluid handling systems to process industries. Because of our strong reputation in the industry for reliability, performance, and technical innovation, one of the largest potato fries companies in the Netherlands have counted on Kadant Johnson for high quality rotary unions for more than 50 years to assure great results with its production processes.

Recently, Kadant Johnson’s service team detected additional needs at this plant that could benefit from Kadant’s doctoring and cleaning solutions, a line of products that also fall within our Flow Control segment along with fluid handling.

Due to the reputation of the fluid handling expertise, the customer installed our AccuFlake PRO blade holder, designed in a range of materials for cleaning and flaking applications on drum dryers. The AccuFlake PRO blade holder is designed to be a bolt-in alternative and an instant upgrade to increase efficiency and overall effectiveness of a floating doctor blade. The optional self-profiling fluid tube enables the blade to fit the roll surface as soon as the doctor is loaded without the need for manual adjustment of profiling screws. The result is better roll contact yielding a cleaner surface, as well as enhanced and longer blade life.

Since this solution has been installed the customer’s production time has increased significantly. Normally, an OEM supplied blade change requires more than one hour. Now the same replacement is done in less than two minutes. In production processes where frequent blade changes are required; this change results in days of additional production time per year.

The new blades not only optimized production time but made it easier to handle as they weigh a fraction of the original ones. The blades are extracted and inserted from the side of the machine, which has significantly improved the safety of the operators during the blade changes.

The benefits of these installations were instantly noticed. With this acquirement, Kadant Johnson and the potato fries company relationship went to the next level and moved Kadant from a product-oriented supplier to a full solution partner.