In-flight recoil separators at zero angle have been used for decades to separate fusion evaporation residues from the primary beam and other reaction products. Depending on the reaction kinematics, the separators can have transmission efficiencies in range between 10% to 90%. Both gas-filled recoil separators and recoil mass spectrometers operating in vacuum have been utilised for the nuclear structure studies of the evaporation residues. In this presentation the main properties of these complementary electromagnetic separators are compared. The modelling schemes are reviewed and some of the modelling results are compared to measured data. The separators of the both kind locating at Jyväskylä in Finland will be presented. These are the gas-filled separator RITU and the new recoil-mass spectrometer MARA which has seen already its first primary beam.
