What makes a washing machine reliable?
Industrial laundries are facilities requiring a high-performance work environment, so it is very important to have machines that can keep up with this pace of work, reliable enough to offer the confidence that this will be the case. As we pointed out in our last post, reliability is essential in choosing a washing machine, as you need to be sure that machine has the right technical features to meet the demands of an industrial laundry. That's why we're devoting today's article to going into greater depth on reliability and the factors than make a washing machine more or less reliable.
The soft-mount system
Industrial washing machines must be compact and robust, as they wash large amounts of linen and work at high speed in complex environments that require very high performance. It must be borne in mind that depending on the volume of work these machines can be operating many hours a day, in some cases working 12, 14 or even 24 hours. They are also washing machines that generate a lot of vibration when spinning, due to their high capacity. For all these reasons, the most reliable washing machines in this case are those known as "soft-mount", which have a have a suspended, independent inner cradle fixed to the machine casing by springs and shock absorbers. This allows them to be installed on any surface, with no need for fixing down, and to spin at much higher speeds. Like this the linen comes out much dryer, cutting spending on drying systems, and also allows increased capacity with higher volumes of work and high productivity.
Vibration monitoring
Monitoring vibrations while spinning is another factor that gives added value and contributes to the reliability of a washing machine, measured by the frequency and seriousness of the faults it suffers. The system can be used to detect faults, making it much easier to carry out preventive maintenance. This means you can act before a breakdown or incident occurs, certainly reducing down time due to equipment failure. Finally, a reliable machine must have a rigid, stable cradle, which makes the machine more robust and therefore longer-lasting.
Other factors to bear in mind that add reliability to a machine are the selection of manufacturing materials, which is essential to assess the quality of a device; a drum design that ensures less wear and tear on fabrics; and all the internal components of the machine must be premium quality.
In short, if a machine is reliable this means a longer working life and lower maintenance costs. Furthermore, as it can work continuously, it pays for itself faster than a less robust machine. For these reasons the new GS7 range of washing machines from Girbau have a redesigned soft-mount system to avoid critical points, a more rigid cradle structure and improved soft mounting. They also feature new plug and play technology so that they can be installed on any surface without any need for fixing in place, so ensuring higher profitability and high standards of reliability in the long term. Moreover, the new GS7 battery allows it to drain in the event of a power cut, giving the user peace of mind and reducing wear on the components.
Finally, it should be stressed that progress in the IoT, the Internet of Things, means much faster maintenance thanks to connectivity through tools like Girbau Sapphire, which allows you to monitor all the information about the machine in real time, as well as productivity and alarms, to be aware of the current status of each machine at all times and act in the event of a breakdown.