Ensuring that your fabrications satisfy the requirements of food-grade welding is as much a matter of quality welding as it is a matter of safety. Food-grade welding is, understandably, an incredibly strict area of production. While all welding comes with a level of risk, sanitary welding, when done improperly, has the potential to make a lot of people very ill. At Northland Fastening Systems (NFS), we take safety seriously and can help you find the tools, techniques, and materials you need to create truly safe machinery with food-grade welding.
Food-Grade Welding Designs
No matter how skilled or precise your welding may be, if a planned design is poorly suited for sanitation, there’s a good chance the final product will never be approved for food-grade production. Understanding the type of designs that lend themselves to food-grade welding is the first step to creating safe and consistent fabrications.
A key aspect of sanitary welding design is ensuring that no fastening or part of the machine has the potential to catch or trap food debris. Designs featuring many sharp angles, divots, or nooks and crannies can become a hotbed of bacterial growth that can quickly lead to illness. This is true in every type of food-grade fabrication from single machines intended for school use to wide-scale factory conveyors. In fact, every step of food-grade welding must be checked and double checked to ensure that it lives up to the strict requirements by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Welding Materials
And similarly, a perfectly designed machine will never be a sanitary weld without the correct materials. Porous materials or materials that are prone to corrosion can become health hazards when placed in a food-oriented environment. Sanitary welding materials such as stainless steel are well suited to such projects, but in order to ensure that they stay safe, materials must have a smooth surface and zero risk of flaking and coming into contact with food.
A combination of highly skilled welding and high-quality materials can facilitate such fabrications, and NFS can assist with both. If you’re working on food-grade welding projects and are in need of high-quality materials, tools, and support, we’ve got your back. Keep your food safe and your machines sanitary by calling us today at (651) 730-7770 or visiting our website for more information.