Gamet Manufacturing Incorporated
Sampling and measurement, Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, United States.
History
Dean Gamet made his first sampling tools in 1937, in Richfield, Minnesota. The company says that by the late 1940s it was already producing brass grain probes and sample dividers. The trade comes down to one sentence: a whole truck is judged on a few kilos, so those few kilos have to be made representative. In the early 1960s, Midwestern Machinery Company took over the business. Under the direction of Richard Selenski and Kendall Johnson, Gamet took part in developing the first diverter samplers. These machines cut the stream rather than dipping into it. Seedburo Equipment Company, of Chicago, bought the company in 1981 and pushed it toward export. In 2001, the management team bought Gamet from Seedburo and founded Gamet Manufacturing Incorporated. Two acquisitions then completed the range, Iowa Grain Probe and Equipment and JaHam Sales and Service. They brought the two truck probe lines, Apollo and JaHam. The company has never built a roaster.
What it makes
Gamet makes no roasting machine. It makes the other half of the trade, that of sampling, and it is in that capacity that it appears here. Its basic piece is the hollow probe, a steel tube driven into the mass to draw out a core. On truck probes, a hydraulic arm plants this tube at several points of the load. A vacuum motor then draws the core up to the office, through a hose. The second principle is diversion. A knife crosses the falling stream of grain, takes its whole width for an instant, then withdraws. The difference matters: taking a part of the width continuously sorts the sample, taking the whole width at intervals does not. The surplus returns to the stream. The third principle is rotary division. A rotor enclosed in a precision-machined cast aluminum housing splits the sample into fractions, driven by a quarter-horsepower gear motor.
The models
No capacity in kilos per batch applies: nothing in this range cooks. Truck probes are read in power and reach. The JaHam JT03 has one horsepower and 240 degrees of rotation. The JT10 and JT20 have two, as does the Apollo 610A. The Apollo 17 goes up to five horsepower and up to 270 degrees. The manufacturer publishes dimensions only for the latter. It stands 13 feet 7 inches tall and takes a tube of 7, 8 or 9 feet. Its pump delivers 4 gallons per minute at 850 pounds per square inch. Its reach runs from 8 feet 3 to 12 feet 3, or from 9 feet 9 to 14 feet 9 depending on the mounting. On the flow side, the 6800S diverter sampler covers spouts of 4 to 16 inches. It handles flows of 1,500 to 20,000 bushels per hour. The bushel counts 56 pounds of grain in their tables, about 25 kg. The 6800L goes from 17 to 31 inches and from 20,000 to 76,000 bushels. The 6400 mounts at the end of a conveyor, from 18 to 108 inches wide. Three smaller devices remain. The A310 pneumatic sampler is adjustable from 12 to 120 cycles per hour. The Vac-A-Sample suction unit runs on 7/8 horsepower, with 25 or 50 feet of hose. The 4203 and 4204 laboratory dividers come in 110 or 220 volts, built to order.
What you gain
The gain lies in published numbers, not in a sales pitch. The rotary divider reduces a sample by 90 percent in a single pass, to within a tenth of 1 percent of the total weight. A gravity divider needs several passes for the same result, and each pass is a chance to lose fines. The diverter sampler cuts the whole width of the stream, so that the stratification of the pile does not bias the draw. Pneumatic transport carries the sample up to 800 feet on the 6800 line. The laboratory therefore does not need to be at the foot of the pit.
What you lose
Nothing here sits on a workbench. The 6800S fits into the spout with its electric controls, and its height follows the diameter: 33.5 inches for a 5 inch spout, 52.75 inches for a 16 inch one. The inner lining, urethane, Kryptane or ceramic, is a wear part to be replaced on abrasive product. The hose that draws the sample also mistreats it: two hundred fifty feet of high-speed air break and sort what they carry. The probe, finally, takes only where the tube passes. A load stratified on purpose can therefore still fool a core.