Cleaning Equipment: Parts Washers and Crate Washers

How Much Has to Be Washed Every Day?

When a bun and dumpling line shuts down for the day, the items to wash include: the encrusting machine's hopper, screw, nozzle, and cutting parts; the mixing bowl and attachments; meat grinder blades and plates; filling buckets; trays, steamer baskets, and carts used for arranging; and plastic crates for finished goods. They're numerous and oddly shaped, and coated with fat, starch, and meat scraps.

Annex 2 of the Regulations on Good Hygiene Practice for Food (食品良好衛生規範準則) requires equipment and utensils to be cleaned thoroughly after use and protected from recontamination, with food-contact surfaces kept smooth and free of dents or cracks; Point 6 of Annex 1 requires water used to wash equipment and utensils to meet drinking water quality standards. How consistent your cleaning is directly affects the next day's product.

Can Parts Go in a Dishwasher?

The first thing many shops think of is a household or restaurant dishwasher, but consider first:

• Size: Encrusting machine hoppers, screws, and large nozzles usually don't fit in an ordinary dishwasher.
• Type of soil: Dough, starch, and fat from meat filling stick in the crevices of parts, and a dishwasher's spray arms may not reach them.
• Materials: Some parts are plastic, rubber, or have special surface treatments, and high temperatures or strong alkaline detergents may deform or age them.
• Manufacturer recommendations: Whether parts can go in a dishwasher and what temperature they can withstand should follow the equipment manufacturer's instructions.

So a dishwasher can be used for small, heat-resistant, simply shaped parts, but most encrusting machine parts still need hand scrubbing or dedicated cleaning equipment.

Dedicated Washers

• Parts washer (cabinet type): Parts are placed on racks inside a cabinet, and nozzles spray from multiple directions. Some machines recirculate the detergent solution and then rinse with clean water. RHEON's Japanese website lists the "RN washer" (RN洗浄機), described as a washer designed specifically for RHEON encrusting machine parts; Rheon USA's KN551 product page also lists a matching parts washer.
• Crate washer (box washer): Plastic crates, totes, and trays are placed on a conveyor and pass in sequence through pre-wash, detergent wash, clean water rinse, and blow-dry; suited to large numbers of crates.
• Wash sinks: The most basic three-compartment sink (wash, rinse, sanitize) with brushes, combined with soaking, is the mainstay of most factories.

This approach of removing parts and cleaning them in a wash sink or washer is known internationally as COP (Clean Out of Place), as distinct from CIP, which cleans without disassembly. For details, see The Difference Between CIP and COP.

What Detergents Should Be Used?

• Always use food-grade cleansers: Article 3 of the Act Governing Food Safety and Sanitation (食品安全衛生管理法) defines "substances used to sanitize or wash foods, food utensils, food containers, or packaging" as food cleansers; they must comply with the Sanitation Standard for Food Cleansers (食品用洗潔劑衛生標準), whose Article 3 sets limits on arsenic, heavy metals, methanol, and the like, and prohibits any detectable fluorescent whitening agents.
• Alkaline detergents: Effective on fats and proteins; commonly used on meat filling equipment.
• Acidic detergents: Remove scale and mineral deposits; used periodically.
• Sanitizers: Sanitize after cleaning. Sanitizing ingredients used on food-contact surfaces without a subsequent clean water rinse must comply with the concentration limits in Annex Table 1 of the sanitation standard; for example, sodium hypochlorite at no more than 200 ppm total available chlorine.

For detailed selection, see Choosing Detergents and Sanitizers.

After Washing

Getting things clean is only half the job; the other half is "keeping them clean":

1. Drain or blow-dry them, and don't wipe them with dirty cloths.
2. Store them on dedicated, raised, ventilated racks to avoid recontamination.
3. Keep cleaning tools and sanitizers in a fixed location, clearly labeled, with a designated person responsible for them, as required by Point 3 of Annex 2 of the Regulations.

FAQ

Q: Can encrusting machine parts go in the dishwasher?
A: Small heat-resistant parts may be fine, but whether they can go in a dishwasher and what temperature they can withstand should follow the equipment manufacturer's instructions; large parts mostly still need hand washing or a dedicated washer.

Q: Are there rules for the water used to wash parts?
A: Under Annex 1 of the Regulations on Good Hygiene Practice for Food, water used to wash manufacturing equipment and utensils must meet drinking water quality standards.

Q: How strong should bleach be for sanitizing?
A: When used on food-contact surfaces without rinsing, sodium hypochlorite must be at or below 200 ppm total available chlorine, diluted according to the product label.

Q: Do I have to buy a crate washer?
A: With few crates, washing by hand in wash sinks is fine; with hundreds or thousands of crates a day, a crate washer saves labor and makes cleaning quality consistent.