Float design guarantees gauge performance

A K-Tek product story

Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Oct 16, 2002

The KM26 magnetic level gauge comes with a risk-free performance guarantee and 5-year warranty.

For rugged, accurate measurement of liquids such as oil, water, acids, solvents, petrochemicals, or most liquid to liquid interfaces across a variety of industries, K-Tek offers its KM26 magnetic level gauge, with a risk-free performance guarantee and 5-year warranty.

As the visible shuttle or bargraph indicator magnetically couples to a float through the wall of the float chamber, the indicator avoids direct contact with liquids, thereby eliminating problems with coating, plating, fouling, fugitive emissions, and hazardous material leaks, as well as difficulty getting accurate readings through dirty or colourless fluids.

With over 65,000 installations worldwide, the KM26 magnetic level gauge has proven itself safe for total and interface applications that are toxic, corrosive, flammable, or high-pressure, and is easy to maintain with no gauge glasses to clean.

K-Tek offers the standard KM26 MLG with a chamber of virtually any nonmagnetic material, extruded process connections, a custom engineered float, and all accessories with 316 stainless-steel construction.

K-Tek floats are custom designed for each application with a "minimum" positive buoyancy of 75g for self-cleaning in foul-prone applications.

These floats are also hermetically sealed and constructed to meet the specific gravity requirements of a customer's process application.

Bargraph and conventional shuttle indicators are provided in hermetically sealed glass tubes with stainless steel rulers to eliminate the potential for corrosion and problems with visibility.

Made from a variety of materials including alloy 20, hastelloy, inconel, aluminium, zirconium, titanium, stainless steel, PVC, CPVC, Kynar, and polypropylene, the KM26 magnetic level gauge boasts process capabilities at the top of its class: from -320 to +1000F, full vacuum to 4500lb/in2(g), with interfaces as low as.03rSG, for use in all liquid viscosities.

According to K-Tek's Kevin Hambrice, "Our variety of available building materials provides a broader solution than anyone else on the market".

Early adopters of the KM26 magnetic level gauge have found it to have outstanding value.

Some have replaced their entire gauge glass bridles with a KM26 for less than the cost of replacement glass, gaskets, and cushions.

Others have achieved a 6 to 12 month ROI in maintenance savings by replacing their gauge glasses with the KM26.

And still others have found the KM26 MLG to be a safer, more operator-friendly level measuring device.

K-Tek is the only North American manufacturer of magnetic level gauges that offers extruded outlet connections that attach the KM26 to the storage vessel.

This eliminates "sink-in" and "bowing" distortion of the MLG chamber that can interfere with float travel and installation alignment problems, found in most other gauge devices.

The KM26's extrusion process, one of the most innovative quality improvements to MLGs in the last 20 years, has eliminated post weld rework and increased float life.

This capability improves the KM26's long-term reliability by eliminating all float wear associated with distorted MLG chambers.

The KM26 is extremely easy to install as a replacement for existing magnetic level gauges.

Each KM26 is custom designed to retrofit and match the existing mounting requirements so that installation to the process or storage vessel is rapid, safe, and reliable.

More importantly, the floats are designed and fabricated in house.

This ensures an extremely high quality, highly reliable product without any inferior third party fabrication processes that might reduce product reliability.

Each KM26 is shipped fully assembled and calibrated, not in parts, directly from K-Tek's factory.

"The floats that are used in this magnetic level gauge are designed and manufactured to meet customer specifications, and shipped out of our factory", explains Hambrice.

"The majority of competitive products will typically outsource that part of the system or just use a generic type float.

Each float is custom designed and fabricated in house, because it is such a critical component for the success of the unit to operate".