Sanitary stainless fabrication · Churnbrook & the butter country · Est. 2009
Welds you could eat off. In fact, you will.
Mirrorseam fabricates food-grade stainless for the creameries, breweries and kitchens of the butter country — 316L tube purged with argon to a bright internal bead, orbital welds on every product line, corners polished to 180 grit and passivated to ASTM A967. The inspector wipes, the swab comes back clean, and the line runs Monday.
The works on Dairy Lane
Two rooms, one standard
The cutting, blasting and pipe-threading happen in the dirty room; the tube bench, the polisher and the passivation tanks live behind a wall it is forbidden to carry swarf through. Sanitary work is mostly discipline about rooms — which is why a fabricator with one open bay keeps selling you a chipped rail, and why ours has a doorway with rules.
The sanitary card
Rates from last quarter’s creamery and brewery work. Every number includes the purge gas, the polish and the passivation certificate — the things a sanitary job cannot skip are not extras.
Sanitary tube rail — fabricated & set$210–265 / linear ft
316L, orbital-welded under argon, pitched to your drains
Process tanks & hopper conesby drawing, from $3,800
Dished heads, CIP spray balls fitted, crevice-free corners
Coved floor & wall panelling$96 / sq ft
Dairy board, coved internal corners, sealed to the wall
Washdown guards & shrouds$120 / linear ft
304 economy line where product never touches
On-site TIG repair — sanitary$145 / hr
Purged field welds, re-passivated in place
Passivation & swab certification$460
ASTM A967, documented, per visit
The weld map
From the plant walk to the clean swab
Day 1
The walk, with your QA
We measure in the plant with the quality lead beside us — slopes, drains, dead legs flagged on the spot, and a photograph of every surface the rail will meet. Sanitary work is decided in the first hour on the floor.
Week 1
The isometric & the weld map
A drawing where every joint carries a number, every purge point is marked, and the slope is called out per run in writing. You approve the map, not just the price — the inspector will ask for it eventually, so it may as well exist early.
Weeks 2–3
The clean room bench
Tube cut and faced square, then orbital-welded under 99.99% argon. Internal beads are inspected with a borescope before a joint is closed; anything sugared or shadowed is cut out and re-done, never cosmetically blended.
Install
Set, passivate, swab
Rail set to the laser slope, field joints purged and welded, the whole contact surface passivated to ASTM A967 and swipe-tested with your QA watching. The certificate is signed on your floor, not mailed later.
The Dairy Lane works
Why the dirty room matters
Carbon steel dust lands on stainless and rusts there later — it is the oldest failure in food plants and it is never the welder’s fault, until it is. Our split rooms mean the torch that welds your rail has never been near a grit blaster. It costs us a wall; it saves you a recall.
The swab is the shipping label
If a Mirrorseam contact surface fails a swipe test in its first year, the re-passivation, the re-test and the visit are ours. In fourteen years it has not happened once — the wall, the purge discipline and the borescope are why.
The butter country, 2025 — 2026
Recent food-grade work
Six lines from the clean room this year. If a caption does not name a finish, assume Ra 20 and a certificate in the crate.
Our old rail had a weld the inspector could hide a cotton swab inside of, and did, twice. Mirrorseam showed me a borescope photo of the INSIDE of their weld — bright, flat, no shadow — before I signed anything. The line passed its swab the first Tuesday and every Tuesday since. I did not know fabrication could be boring. It turns out boring is the compliment.
Before the walk-through
Fair questions
The five every plant manager asks on the first call. The shop line at the bottom of the page answers any shift, including the one at 3 a.m. when the CIP loop alarms.
Why 316L and not 304 everywhere?
The two percent molybdenum in 316L is what stands up to brine, chloride cleaners and the salt a cheese plant breathes. 304 is legitimate steel and we use it — but only where product never touches and no hose ever points. The drawing marks which is which, per surface.
What is a dead leg, and why do you keep saying it?
A stub of tube that holds product without flow — a culture hotel with a doorman. We design runs so every branch drains, and we flag any your existing plant forces on us, in writing, before the weld map is approved.
Can you weld inside a running plant?
Yes — night shifts, containment tents, hot-work permits we file ourselves, and a purge box so the argon stays where the joint is. Plants do not stop for fabricators; fabricators work around the cleaning schedule.
Powder-coat on my frames?
Never on a product-contact surface — paint is a foreign object waiting to chip. Legs and non-contact frames get a two-pack epoxy in your colour, and the drawing lists every painted piece so the inspector never has to ask.
How long is my line down?
Measured on a Friday, fabricated in two to three weeks, and installed in one planned shift — field joints purged, passivated and swabbed before your QA goes home. The line is down for hours, not weeks.
Plant walk-throughs on any shift, estimates inside two days · (555) 014-2210 · shop@mirrorseam.example
Send the line drawing — or the napkin version
A sketch of the run, the drains it must fall to, and what the plant makes. The weld map and the fixed quote follow the walk-through, and the swab certificate follows the work. shop@mirrorseam.example