Richard Moore (Founder and CEO) designed the orignal 'tru-flo' filter sector in the early 70's including the concept of producing it via rotational molding. To that end, we established Plastic Techniques and commenced working with various Companies to refine the product. The result was the basic filter sector we know of today with the easily removable neck. This is an important feature as wear on a filter sector is usually concentrated at the neck. The original shape of the filter sector has changed very little. However, the method of attaching the neck has been substantially altered in order to make the neck easily removable even under harsh build-up conditions.

A further modification that has taken place is the replacement of cast iron sector necks with urethane. It has been found that the urethane lasts just as long as cast iron, but is much lighter and easier to handle. The lighter weight of the urethane also reduces transport costs. The weight of the neck is very important in a filter sector as the mounting of the sector on the filter necessitates extending the neck several feet from the arms of the installer. An extra ten pounds of cast iron makes a big difference because it may be several feet in front of the hands. Urethane necks pay for them selves in one less back injury. The weight of the body of the sector has also been substantially reduced, but there aren't many people around who remember the steel/punch plate sectors we've replaced.

A mill, once it has been constructed and put into operation can work for a very long time given careful maintenance. To this end, we have produced a large variety of sector sizes and combinations of sector necks in order to meet the requirements of most operating disk filters. Basically, to match an existing filter sector, we need to know the overall length of the sector on the longest (usually center) dimension, plus the inside diameter of the neck.

If a filter sector is properly bagged, there is no reason for any wear on the sector or the neck. Improper bagging resulting in neck wear is similar to a 'fuse' in that the wear on the inside of the filter (which cannot be seen) is going to be much worse. It is very important that the corner of the bags on the sector are properly closed as described further on. We have also included a paper written by a plant engineer who set out to reduce filtrate solids to almost nothing and succeeded very well.

A plant that has never used MPTI's polyethylene filter sectors will usually want to test them to be sure that they perform as expected. Looking at a disk filter, it's logical to conclude that the best test is to install a disk. However, this is not so. Although the disk is the most obvious feature of a disk filter, the installation of the sectors in a row on the vacuum pipe is the only way to test and compare them. If a disk is installed, the polyethylene sectors will be 'averaged' with the existing sectors that are in the row; the significant operating advantages will be entirely missed. This is especially true if our sectors are compared to hollow sectors.

MPTI also provides one piece polyethylene chute liners for 6'; 6'9"; 8'10" and 10'6" disk filters. Additionally, we produce deflector plates that are produced with an 'undercurve' that slides over the lip of the chute.