Sanifan Technology

Stainless Motors Inc. has been manufacturing stainless severe wash-down duty sanitary electric motors and gear motors since 1990 for the pharmaceutical, biotech, and food processing industries.  Throughout its many years of experience they have developed cutting edge technologies for improved longevity, as well as superior sanitary designs for severe wash-down environments.  They are continuously refining their designs as new challenges arise with more stringent sanitary requirements for processing equipment.

What makes their Sanifan Technology special?

Stainless Motor features

These features create a totally sealed motor and are key to preventing the ingress of water.  Other manufactures offer motors they claim are safe for food applications. But when you examine their designs, you realize the danger these motors create.  Whereas Stainless Motors utilizes proprietary stainless mechanical shaft seals to prevent water entryother motors use low cost lip or labyrinth seals, which over time can allow the entry of water past a groove in the shaft.  This water then travels through the bearing, eventually resulting in bearing failure.  To prevent the water from shorting the motor windings other manufacturers encapsulate the windings, but that doesn’t address the issue of bearing failure.  Multiple drain ports are included in their designs to allow the water or condensation to drain out of the motor.

Now let’s consider what goes on inside a competitor’s motor.  The motor stays warm and wet inside, and the windings may be protected from shorting due to the water, but what grows where it’s warm and wet?  EVERYTHING!  Every microbe, bacterium, and spore that enters the motor through the shaft seal or drain port will live in the best possible breeding ground, and protected from washdown cycles.  Then, when moisture does exit the drain ports, it’s heavily laden with the worst possible contamination.  The next thing you will hear in the plant is “We have no idea where that listeria, e-coli, or salmonella came from”.  Further sanitation efforts in the plant will have no effect on what’s growing inside that motor, or hundreds of other motors in their plant.

Washdown sanitary motor

The best protection against this means of contamination is a totally sealed motor where no water gets in or out, and is designed with extreme sanitation in mind.  Only Stainless Motors Inc. offers such a motor in their Sanifan Series, and Sanifan Plus Series.  The Sanifan Plus Series includes a spray head in the ODE (fan side) endbell to clean under the fan shroud, and can do so even when the motor is running.

For more information, check out Stainless Motors Mini-Catalog on our Literature and White Papers page.