Stainless Steel Pressure Gauges And Wash Down Applications
Pressure is the second most measured process variable in industry. Despite this, most users of pressure gauges have a poor understanding of what is available to best suit their needs.
It is good design practice to use the least expensive component that reliably does the job. There are two sides to this:
Why would you use a component that has higher grade materials and therefore a high price, than their application requires? Almost no one would. To use an analogy, no one would rent a 10 truck to do the work that a one ton truck could do. As seems logical, this almost never happens.
The other side of this however, using a component of lower grade material and therefore lower cost than the application requires is all too common in industry. Many people try to put 10 tons worth of stuff on a 1 ton truck and then replace the truck when it fails!
Think about your plant. Is there one component that always fails or wears prematurely? Over 65% of US manufacturing plants have some component, be it a bearing, valve , pressure gauge etc. that is replaced more than twice per year, when all other components in its group are replace less than one time per year.
While doing this will earn the gratitude of the salesman who sells this frequently replaced component, it hurts your bottom line tremendously.
This is true for pressure gauges. Most gauge failures occur from conditions external to the process. Most commonly, gauges that are not stainless steel are used in wash down applications. Over time the gauge will rust and or leak and eventually fail. Then it is replaced, with another non stainless steel gauge. This is done for the two obvious reasons: The non stainless gauge is cheaper and