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A Guide for Choosing the Right Magnetic Separator - Magnattack

08 Sep.,2025

A Guide for Choosing the Right Magnetic Separator - Magnattack

Magnetic separators are essential components in a variety of processing or production industries, from food processing to pet food production. However, selecting the wrong type of separator can lead to significant issues, including heightened contamination risks, product recalls, and even damage to processing equipment. This guide will help you understand the importance of choosing the right magnetic separator for your application and how to make informed decisions to protect your operations.

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The Importance of Selecting the Correct Magnetic Separator

When it comes to maintaining product quality and safety, the type of magnetic separator you choose can significantly impact your operation. Each industry has unique processing requirements, and using an unsuitable separator can result in less effective removal of metal contaminants, leading to product recalls, safety hazards, and financial losses. For example, a separator that works well for dry grain may not be designed for sanitary dairy environments, where different hygiene standards and processing requirements are vital for product safety.

Additionally, a magnetic separator can fail to capture and retain contaminants, which could damage other equipment. For instance, selecting a magnet with insufficient strength in a high-volume processing line might allow metal fragments to pass through, potentially damaging machinery downstream. This not only leads to costly repairs but also increases downtime, affecting overall productivity.

How to Select a Magnet Based on Your Needs

Selecting the right magnetic separator requires a thorough understanding of your processing needs and the characteristics of your products. Here are key factors to consider when choosing the right magnet:

Size of the Separator: The size of the magnetic separator should be appropriate for the scale of your operation. A separator that is too small may not handle the required volume, while one that is too large could be unnecessarily costly and difficult to integrate into your existing process.
Magnetic Strength: The strength of the magnet is crucial for effective contamination control. The magnetic field must be strong enough to capture and retain metal fragments, including magnetic fines, work hardened stainless steel, magnetic stone, and more. Ensure that the magnet’s strength matches the contamination risk in your product stream.
Flow Rate: Consider the flow rate of your product through the separator. The separator must be capable of handling the speed and volume of your production line without causing bottlenecks or reducing efficiency. A separator that disrupts the flow can lead to product build-up or inconsistent contamination control.
Cleaning Methods: The cleaning process is another critical factor. Some separators require manual cleaning, which can be time-consuming and labor-intensive. Others, like self-cleaning separators, automatically remove collected metal, reducing downtime and labor costs. Consider your production environment and the level of automation you require.
Product Characteristics: The nature of the product you’re processing—whether it’s wet, dry, sticky, or abrasive—will influence the type of separator you need. Ensure that the separator is designed to handle the specific characteristics of your product without losing efficiency.
Installation Environment: Consider where the separator will be installed within your production line. Some separators are needed at the beginning of the process or mid-process, and some are needed at the end and as a final magnet before packaging.
Compliance with Industry Standards: Ensure that the magnetic separator you choose meets all relevant industry standards and regulations. This is particularly important in industries such as food processing, pharmaceuticals, and dairy, where strict hygiene and safety standards are enforced.

By carefully evaluating these factors and understanding the specific needs of your production environment, you can select the right magnetic separator that not only ensures effective contamination control but also optimizes your operational efficiency. Consulting with an expert in magnetic separation, like Magnattack Global, can provide valuable insights and help you make an informed decision.

Industry Applications: Tailoring Your Magnetic Separation Strategy

With certain industry standards like HACCP food safety compliance, your business may need a more tailored approach to magnetic separation. Magnetic separators are a necessary addition to any manufacturer where metal contamination is or can be an issue.

Pet Food Production

Maintaining product purity is critical in pet food manufacturing. Contaminants can originate from various sources, including raw materials and equipment wear. If the wrong magnetic separator is chosen, the risk of metal fragments slipping through the production line is heightened, leading to compromised product safety and potential harm to animals. Selecting the correct separator is essential for avoiding costly recalls and ensuring compliance with industry standards.

Meat Rendering

The rendering industry involves processing animal by-products and tends to have a high level of metal contamination. Selecting an inappropriate separator could lead to metal fragments being overlooked, resulting in compromised product quality. The right separator must be robust enough to handle the abrasive nature of the materials processed, ensuring contaminants are effectively removed without damaging the equipment.

Bakery Processing

In the baking industry, metal contamination can occur during various stages of production, from ingredient handling and intake to the final product. Inefficiencies in metal fragment control could result in a lower-quality product and contamination reaching the consumer, damaging the brand’s reputation.

Exploring Magnattack’s Rare Earth Magnetic Separators for Wet and Dry Applications

Once you have identified your specific needs based on the application, it’s time to select the magnetic separator that best suits your operation. Magnattack Global offers a range of models designed to meet the demands of different industries and processing environments.

For Wet Applications:

Pressure Pipeline Separators: These separators are designed for liquid products, including high-temperature liquids, and are suitable for applications such as chocolate, beverages, oil, and more. They have minimal resistance to flow and perform efficiently without leaks, blockage, or distortion.
Emulsion and Slurry Pipeline Separators: Designed for high-viscosity liquids like emulsions and slurries, these separators effectively capture and retain metal contaminants. They are particularly useful in industries like meat processing and pet food, where the thick consistency of the product can make metal contamination control difficult. Magnattack’s Emulsion and Slurry Pipeline Separators with rare earth magnets maintain high magnetic efficiency even in thick, challenging products, ensuring that your final product is safe and meets industry standards.

For Dry Applications:

Rapidclean® Drawer Magnets: These rare earth magnets are perfect for capturing metal contaminants in dry powders, grains, and other dry ingredients. Their design ensures that even the smallest particles are removed and are easy to clean.
Mag-Ram® Self-Cleaning Separator: Ideal for high-contamination environments, this separator’s self-cleaning feature reduces downtime and allows for continuous operation. It is particularly useful in industries like meat rendering, pet food, and dairy processing, where frequent cleaning is necessary.

Make the Right Choice with Magnattack’s Professional Guidance

A Comprehensive Guide to Prater's Particle Size Reduction Equipment

Many industries utilize particle size reduction and separation as a regular part of their operations when processing bulk materials. These functions require equipment that can adequately deal with the physics behind such processing. Nearly a century ago, Prater Industries began making machinery to deal with particle size reduction and separation of materials. This equipment has since evolved and is now used for a myriad applications. Today, under the umbrella of the IMI Holding Corporation, Prater continues to make innovative machinery and offer our technical expertise.

An Overview: Particle Size Reduction & Separation Equipment by Prater Industries

By definition, a particle is a distinct and separate segment of a material. These particles can be in solid, liquid or gaseous in form, and can be anywhere from an inch or more in size to microscopic elements smaller than a nanometer. Most often, equipment used for particle size reduction and separation is used for handling bulk solids, though such machinery can be made to deal with fluids or gases as well.

Particles can be classified into these three basic groupings:

Solids in granule and powder form such as cement, ingredients for pharmaceuticals and pigments for paint.
Liquified particles in the form of emulsions, slurries and suspensions like milk, muds from mining activities and vaccines.

Industries that use equipment for particle size reduction and separation do so for a couple reasons. First, it improves the quality of the product being processed, which in turn allows businesses to charge more, reduce rejection rates by customers and comply with regulatory requirements. Second, through the understanding of a product and its constituent ingredients, processing can control a material’s properties, which can in turn improve the performance, increase output and optimize the efficiency of a product.

Benefits of Prater Equipment for Particle Size Reduction & Separation

Prater makes cutting-edge industrial equipment and systems for particle size reduction and separation, particularly for bulk solids and powders. The benefits of each piece of equipment are in their designs, which have been carefully engineered to handle specific issues for various processing applications and materials. Prater’s material processing equipment can be used to reduce, mill, grind and break lumps up as well as classify, separate, sift and size bulk materials. Some of this same Prater machinery can be used to feed, finish and blend these materials as well.

Each piece of equipment made by Prater is designed to do the job for which it was made at the highest level of efficiency, and if it doesn’t do so as efficiently as a manufacturer requires, Prater’s technical staff has the knowledge and experience to see that it will. While basic Prater equipment is highly durable, dependable and easy to maintain, it’s also readily customizable to fit into larger systems and comes with the backing of Prater’s seasoned technical and engineering staff. If there’s something a specific piece of equipment needs to do better, it’s these people who are dedicated to making Prater’s machines work even better for any specific application.

Materials & Particle Types

The list of materials processed by Prater particle size reduction and separation equipment is endless, though each piece of equipment has its strengths in certain applications and with specific materials. Each piece of equipment also reduces particles to specific sizes and within given parameters while separating them accordingly.

Prater particle size reduction equipment includes:

Lump Breakers: Also known as a lump crusher or flake breaker, Prater’s lump breakers are used to break down agglomerated materials to ensure better flow of the material through the system, generally breaking these down just under two inches; materials it processes include detergents, non-dairy creamer and potassium. Prater also makes a quick-clean model of lump breaker that’s easier to clean and maintain, which can be used with materials such as clay, paper waste and sulfur.
Hammer mills: At the company’s inception, Prater began by making hammer mills, and its full-screen G-series hammer mills are used for reducing bulk materials into uniform granular particles. It’s used for a wide variety of materials, including wheat/grain, fibers, minerals, shelled and soy, resins and salts.
Mega Mill hammer mills: Designed to produce uniform particles between granulates made by Prater’s full-screen hammer mills and finer powders, the Mega Mill is used to reduce various materials like spices, barley, chalk, milo, oyster shells, sodium sulfate and wood flour.
M-Series fine grinders: Able to produce particles sized between 60 to 400 mesh with tight parameters for particle size distribution, Prater’s fine grinders are used in the processing of activated carbon, charcoal, gypsum, perlite, resins, fine sugars and other materials.
Air classifying mills: This mill produces ultra-fine particles – from 50 mesh to submicron levels – with very narrow distributions. It’s used for an array of applications that include the processing of boron nitrate, coffee, sugar, yellow peas, eggshells, flour, salt and yellow pigments.

Prater particle sizing and separation equipment include:

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Rotary sifters: Prater’s Rota-Sieve® uses centrifugal force to deal with much higher throughputs than sifters with comparable screen areas and is capable of sifting product down to 200 mesh without needing any anti-binding agents. It can be used with agglomerated material, granulated substances and free-flowing bulk powders.
Mini-split air classifiers: Capable of separating particles between 1 and 75 microns, mini-split air classifiers work best for smaller production runs and are often used to process materials like aluminum oxide, diatomaceous earth, magnesium oxide, nylon powder, quartz and silicon dioxide.
Vibratory screeners: With sizing capabilities between 6 inches (152.4 mm) to 40 mesh (420 microns), Prater’s vibratory screeners not only separate particles in multiple size ranges, they also remove foreign material and oversized particles while removing fines from the processing stream or segregating excess liquid from product. Prater’s vibratory screeners work well with abrasives, wood, gravel, limestone, oils, plastics, slurries, and other materials.
MAC air classifiers: Separating particles between 3 and 150 microns, Prater’s MAC air classifiers utilize centrifugal force within a pneumatic system to process materials like almond hulls, diatomaceous earth, calcium carbonate, calcite, dextrose, fumed silica, and mica.

There aren’t any materials that Prater’s particle size reduction and separation equipment can’t handle. Technical service representatives also constantly look for ways to make Prater equipment process material more efficiently.

Prater Technical Services

Prater’s technical services support customers who require particle size reduction and separation equipment. Not only will Prater’s technical staff help with choosing the right machinery for an application, but they will also offer assistance for startup manufacturers designing the best particle size reduction and separation system for their application. Additionally, they can help troubleshoot these system designs and advise on preventive maintenance.

Prater Industries is supported by a network of technical service representatives throughout North America. Prater as a result is renowned for its technical services, with well-trained representatives that can competently offer technical advice to solve real-world problems. Through careful analysis, Prater’s technical teams seek a true understanding of customers’ needs, using their skill, knowledge, and problem-solving abilities to come up with customized solutions that work best for their application.

Tips for Selecting the Right Particle Size Reduction Equipment

With nearly a century in the business of building particle size reduction and separation equipment, Prater has plenty of tools to assist manufacturers in making sure their equipment works optimally within a processing system. This includes literature like technical guides for Prater machinery, manuals regarding replacement components, case studies, blog posts, and articles in material handling industry magazines. Yet these aren’t the only tools available for manufacturers investigating Prater equipment.

Other tools that offer tips on finding the best Prater equipment for an application include:

Airlock calculator that uses the results of several questions to calculate the necessary rotary airlock size based on aerated bulk density, required flow rate, rotations per minute, and the efficiency of the valve.
Equipment recommendation tool that asks about the particle size reduction requirements to suggest specific machinery.
Particle size comparison chart that helps in conversions between mesh and microns.

For further information on airlocks, customers can investigate their specifications for each model, options, dimensions and drawings, features, and capacity tables. In addition to these tools, Prater’s home page offers stylized drawings that show how their particle size reduction and separation equipment works. For more information about any of Prater’s particle size reduction and separation equipment, there’s also a catalog.

Common Questions About Prater’s Particle Size Reduction & Separation Solutions

Here are some common questions customers ask about Prater's solutions for particle size reduction and separation:

What is the best particle size for my material and application?

This will depend on the material and application, though it’s the first step in determining the exact type of particle size reduction and separation machinery to use.

Which is the best machinery for my application?

To determine this, it’s important to first establish what goals are necessary for particle size reduction and separation of the material, which entails reviewing the properties of the material being processed. Prater’s online equipment recommendation tool can help, as can the specifications within their online catalog. If the answer still isn’t readily evident, it may be time to ask one of Prater’s technical service representatives.

Is this machine just for smaller throughputs, or can it be scaled up?

With any particle size reduction and separation system, a manufacturer should look not only at current needs but also how the business might expand in the future. A smaller machine may suffice for research and development activities, whereas a larger model may be necessary for mass production. If a company plans to concentrate on smaller throughputs, it’s best to buy equipment that will easily be able to process the largest expected batches of product. If the manufacturer plans to scale up operations, it should look at models that can process larger throughputs more quickly.

How safe is the machine and system?

Safety features are an integral part of every piece of Prater equipment. Prater designs every machine to limit hazards that can result in injury, with an understanding that moving parts must have proper guards, and failsafe shutoffs when unintended access occurs, along with technology to control and prevent deflagrations from material dust. Above all, the safety of the workers who use our equipment is of utmost importance.

What’s required for cleaning and sanitizing the equipment?

This is particularly important for food and drink processing companies, along with any other manufacturer that deals with material that will be ingested, such as pet food and pharmaceutical manufacturers. Not only do Prater designs make changeovers, cleaning, inspection, and maintenance easier, but they also help a material processing facility maintain regulatory compliance.

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