OEMs’ receive a constant flow of feedback from their end users once equipment is installed and in use. Often OMNI is referred to collaborate on the OEMs behalf, in this case with a large food manufacturer that produces and packages individual sausage sticks. The type of product that millions of people see at convenience stores across the country every day. Equipment running product at such high volume and demand will inevitably experience part failure, downtime, and loss of production.

OMNI was pointed directly to the Lane Diverters. This is where the product is conveyed to the cartoner at a high rate of speed. At this point, there is a gate that diverts the product from one lane into two lanes to control product flow and volume. The original diverter was fabricated from steel, and as such created issues with product flow from jams and the flow wrapped product getting caught in the crevices.

OMNI worked on the design to streamline the diverter and remove impediments to flow and increased the sanitation as a solution to their manufacturing problem. As you can see below the original steel diverter was full of welds and seams. The concept design was 3D printed and tested on the production lines. The improvement was dramatic. After some additional improvements to the design a mold was commissioned then designed and constructed. We then produced the molded production parts. With the improved diverter, the end user was able to increase line speeds, and the 200+ jams per day were drastically reduced increasing uptime on the equipment.