The Top Drive Advantage

Cleaner, Safer Design

With standard in-wall, production-scale GMX top drive mixers, mechanical drive components and electrical power devices are located in a technical space away from the process area. With a bottom drive mixer, the dirty drive components and potentially unsafe electrical power system are in the process room, directly under the mixer bowl.
With production-sized equipment, bottom drive mixers require large permanent platforms and steps to access the bowl. With the top drive design, the bowl can be accessed from the floor level or with a small, portable platform.
To clean or inspect the entire mixer blade of the top drive mixer, all that is required is to remove the bowl to gain full access to the blade, including the bottom surface. To access the bottom surface of the bottom drive mixer blade, the blade must be removed from the mixer.
Removal of the mixer blade for large production bottom drive mixers requires a lift device. These lift devices must be portable, as they cannot be kept in the process room.

The mixer bowl for top drive mixers is easily removed by lowering the bowl onto a cart and rolling it out of the machine for remote bowl loading, cleaning, and maintenance. Bottom drive mixer bowls can only be removed after the mixer blade is removed, a potentially difficult and dangerous procedure.
With the ease of bowl removal with the top drive design, a spare product bowl can greatly reduce turnaround time between batches.
With the GMX top drive design, the mixer and chopper air seals and bearings are located in the fixed lid rather than the bottom of the product bowl. This makes cleaning and maintenance much faster and simpler with the top drive design.
The fixed lid of the top drive design allows for positive connections to solution, product charging, vacuum, and cleaning ports which do not need to be removed to access the inside of the bowl. With the bottom drive design, the lid is hinged and therefore, all connections must be disconnected before the lid can be opened to access the bowl.

Most bottom drive mixers have cylindrical or “tulip” shaped bowls. This geometry limits “rope-type” product movement, which can result in lower density granules. The top drive mixer bowl has a rounded geometry, which enhances the roping movement and results in denser, more consistent granules.
The vertical chopper design of the top drive mixer propels product back to the sides of the mixer bowl, where the granulation and mixing work is done. Bottom drive mixers have horizontally-oriented choppers, which throws product up to the lid, where no work is done on that product.