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"Davisco pushed us, quite honestly," allows Jack Jordan, president of Sudmo. "Somebody had to sit down and redesign a valve to handle particulate, and that''s a big challenge. But the ability to handle particulate up to 1.5 inches opens up complete new markets for us." Fruit for yogurt, orstahydraulicpump soups and pet foods are among the processing segments evaluating the technology.Another innovation that must pass sanitary muster before it can find wide application in food processing is the constant flow (CF) valve from GATE LLC. The valve was developed by John Newton, a Florida inventor and founder of Grand Banks Yachts, at the request of E.I. DuPont de Nemours to improve the accuracy of chemical spraying in agriculture. Accurate depositing is easy to achieve if pressure is constant, but that is not always the case. The CF valve offers a simplified design and preset calibration to precisely dispense liquids or gases. Leave it to Bobcat Co. to come up with something to address those issues. Bobcat, the division of Ingersoll-Rand that is generally credited with inventing the skid-steer loader, has taken the skid-steer loader concept and turned it somewhat on its head with the introduction of the orstahydraulicpump and orstahydraulicpump A220, which is an all-wheel steer loader with skid-steer capabilities--in orstahydraulicpump essence, a skid-steer that doesn''t skid."This orstahydraulicpump machine came about because of customer requests," said Mike Fitzgerald, loader product representative, at Bobcat Co. "They were looking for certain things on skid-steer loaders, like reduced tire wear, less ground disturbance, less marking on asphalt and concrete. Now the question for us was, how do we accomplish that?"
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