Fitzpatrick Roller Compactors

The Fitzpatrick Company has built size reduction and dry granulation equipment since the 1930s, and two of its product names became the words buyers use for the machines themselves. A Fitzmill is a hammer mill: a rotor carrying impact or knife blades runs against a perforated screen, and the screen opening sets the particle size. A Chilsonator is a roller compactor, which presses dry powder between two counter-rotating rolls into a ribbon that is then milled into granules.

Federal Equipment Company is an independent dealer in used Fitzpatrick equipment. We buy and sell Fitzmill comminutors and Chilsonator roller compactors, and we stock the mill screens and change parts behind them. Machines are mostly stainless steel, with 304 and 316 stainless steel units on hand, in screw-feed, pan-feed, and gravity-feed arrangements. Mill main drives range from 1 to 30 HP, and Chilsonator roll drives range from 2.5 to 60 HP.

Two subpages break the listing down: Fitzpatrick mills, which also holds the screens, and Fitzpatrick roller compactors. Most units are held at our Cleveland, OH facility and are available for inspection.

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Browse our selection below and request a quote for more information regarding our Fitzpatrick Roller Compactors.

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Equipment We Carry

Fitzmill hammer mills: the largest part of what we handle from this brand. Impact and knife-blade rotors running against a perforated screen, in bench, pilot, and production sizes. The wider category sits on our hammer mills and Fitzmills page.
Chilsonator roller compactors: dry granulation systems with cored rolls, rotary unions, hydraulic or mechanical roll closure, and an integrally mounted or bottom-mounted Fitzmill behind the rolls. Cross-shop these on our roller compactors page.
Mill screens and change parts: round-hole screens, rasping screens, rotor assemblies, and process chamber covers. These are listed alongside the machines, and covered in Parts & Change Parts below.

Models & Series

Individual machines sell and are replaced, but the same series come through year after year, and they are what buyers search by.

Fitzmill comminutors. The DASO6 is the series we see most often, followed by the D6 and D6A, the L1A and L1A-MP, the DKASO12, and the M5A. The JT and J Homoloid mills turn up regularly, and the FASO series appears on larger systems. Feed arrangements vary within a series: the same DASO6 can be screw-fed, pan-fed, or gravity-fed, so match the feed to your material rather than to the model number alone.

Chilsonator roller compactors. Model names encode the roll geometry, with the first figure the roll face width and the second the roll diameter, both in inches. A 1.5LX8D has rolls 1.5 inches wide and 8 inches in diameter, and a 12LX16D has rolls 12 inches wide and 16 inches in diameter. We regularly handle the 1.5LX8D and 2LX8D bench sizes, the 4LX10D, the 12LX16D, and the L83, along with the IR220, the IR520, and the CCS series.

Fitzpatrick became part of IDEX Corporation in 2011. Machines built since then can carry IDEX branding alongside the Fitzpatrick name, and the model designations did not change. Federal Equipment Company has no affiliation with either company and sells this equipment as an independent dealer.

Applications & Industries

Pharmaceutical manufacturing: wet and dry milling of granulation, sizing of active ingredients, and dry granulation ahead of compression
Solid dosage production: sizing granulation between the granulator and the blender, and compacting moisture-sensitive or heat-sensitive actives that will not tolerate a wet granulation step
Chemical processing: milling pigments, catalysts, resins, and dry intermediates, and densifying low bulk density powders so they will not segregate in transit
Food and beverage production: spices, sweeteners, starches, and dry beverage bases
Vitamin, nutraceutical, and supplement production: breaking down compacted premixes and granulating vitamin and mineral blends
Laboratory and pilot work: bench mills and small Chilsonators used for formulation development and scale-up trials

Parts & Change Parts

Screens are consumable, formulation-specific, and the most common reason to come looking for Fitzpatrick parts. We stock them deep, and a maintenance buyer hunting a mesh size is usually better served by the Fitzpatrick mills page, where the screens are listed individually with their OEM part numbers and can be filtered.

What we carry breaks into a few families:

Round-hole screens, the standard type, with hole sizes from 0.012 up to 0.750 inches.
Mesh screens across the range, from a coarse 3-mesh down to a fine 200-mesh
Rasping screens, used where the material needs to be torn rather than cut
Rotor assemblies, impact and knife blades, and process chamber covers

Screens are machine-specific rather than universal. The families we hold most of fit the M5A, the D6 and D6A, the L1A, the JT and J Homoloid, and the SLS and IR220. A screen for one of those will not drop into another, so confirm the machine and the serial number before ordering. Every screen is listed with its OEM part number on its own item page, which is the fastest way to match what you already run. Our parts division, PharmParts, carries Fitzpatrick mill parts beyond screens, organized by machine: the M5 and M5A, the D6, D6A, and DASO6, the D12 and DKASO12, the L1A, and the Model J, JT, and JT6.

Why Buy Used

A new Fitzmill or Chilsonator is a build-to-order machine, with lead times measured in months, and a screen package adds to that on its own. A unit already on the floor can ship in weeks once inspection is complete.

These machines hold up well because the wear points are few and well understood. Screens, blades, rotors, seals, and roll surfaces take the wear, and all of them are replaceable. Spare screens and change parts often come with the machine, which matters because screen selection is tied to the formulation rather than to the mill.

Federal Equipment Company inspects equipment at intake and records rotor and screen condition, drive function, seal condition, and control system state. Refurbishment and run testing can be arranged before shipment. Process validation remains the buyer's responsibility.

Buyers comparing Fitzmills also look at Quadro Comils (also called conical mills), Hosokawa, Frewitt, Glatt, Stokes, and Sturtevant.

On the compaction side the usual alternatives are Gerteis, Alexanderwerk, Freund-Vector, and Bepex.