Market leading ‘egg sanitising and handling product’ improved
31 August 2017
When an innovative egg supplier to UK shoots and game reserves developed a process for sanitising eggs, it realised the tray mechanism needed improving.
Sanitised eggs help ensure good quality chicks
Within poultry farming it is recognised that good cleaning and disinfection practices are part of the optimisation of the viable day old chick production in a hatchery. Good egg hygiene has often proven to improve the viability and the quality of the chicks as any strong bacterial penetration through the egg shell will affect several aspects of hatching quality.
Handling 1000’s of wet eggs an hour is a slippery business
The development of a commercial egg tray which could manage the egg positioning throughout the process proved to be a little more challenging. The initial design iterations came across a problem of accuracy, as the eggs needed to be held to within 0.5mm for laser inspection, the process after sanitisation.
The metal and plastic combination tray often distorted
The client had tried several design modifications to resolve this issue before they were recommended to Tex Plastics. The main issue was the current “off the shelf” tray was distorting going through the sterilisation and incubation machines. The tray had to remain flat but with a mixture of flexing through use and the combination of metal securing clips and plastic inserts - the problem continued to reoccur.
Tex Plastics developed a single moulded product which solved the problem
Known for design expertise in large technical plastic components, Tex Plastics were recommended to the client. Both the product and process it was subjected to were reviewed by the Tex Plastics technical design team. They engineered a single mould without the need for joints in a highly stable technical polymer. This meant the product overall was lighter, more durable and most importantly didn’t distort with use.
As there was no assembly and zero failure rate - the price per unit was lower
Rethinking products means you can look beyond the day to day function and resolve hidden production costs. In this instance the requirement for sub-assembly was not only a key driver in the failure rate of the original product but a hidden cost in the product itself.