Food manufacturers are looking for ways to update their operations

Throughout the food manufacturing industry, food safety is a top priority, and in order to enhance safety in their operations, baking companies are exploring sanitary equipment design solutions borrowed from the meat and poultry sectors.

Food manufacturers are looking for ways to update their operations. In many cases, food safety benefits from collaboration and the sharing of ideas across industry sectors. To ensure that they are adequately prepared for a new regulatory environment, many members of the baking industry have begun taking food safety cues from the meat and poultry industries that are subject to much stricter safety standards under the USDA.

In any food production operation, sanitary equipment design can go a long way toward reducing the spread of contaminants and improving food safety. Baking operations are no exception, and baking companies should consider investing in sanitary equipment in order to bring their food safety measures in line with new standards. In particular, conveyors are one type of equipment that can be used across industry sectors to deliver improved safety.

Knowledge about packaging equipment

In some cases, packaging equipment manufacturers that have historically designed and produced products for the meat and poultry sectors are extending their customer base to provide customized equipment for manufacturers of baked goods. Some key sanitary design elements include welded frames to minimize bolted connections, closed tubes, and other nooks and crannies that are vulnerable to microbial contaminants.

Some baking companies are exploring the use of conveyors designed for the meat and poultry industries to meet USDA standards. Since operations that deal with meat and poultry face a huge number of safety issues on a regular basis, baking companies can leverage sanitary equipment design to create a safer environment for their own operations. Regardless of the type of products a baking company is making, it can find benefit in exploring sanitary equipment options, and the food industry is seeing a progression in sanitary conveyor designs from meat to baking.

Baking operations can be messy, and properly cleaning all food remnants out of all cracks and crevices can take a significant amount of time. A design that minimizes these areas can cut cleaning times and promote a safer production environment.

About the multihead weigher

Multihead weigher also known as combination scales, multi-head weighers use a number of different weigh heads to generate precise measurements of products by calculating the weight in each weigh head. Each Weigh head has its own precision load cell.

The process begins when product is fed into the top of the multihead weigher, where a dispersal system, normally a vibrating  or rotating top cone,  distributes the product into a series of linear feed plates. This top cone is normally equipped with a load cell which controls the feed of product to the multihead weigher. A series of curtains are normally placed around the linear feeders to ensure an even quantity of product is available for distribution to the feed hoppers.

The linear feed plates vibrate individually. The amplitude and duration of vibration can be varied to increase or decrease the vibration depending on the charachteristics of the product. For sticky products a lot of vibraton will be required wheras for free flowing products a minimal amount of vibration will be required to get the product moving.  Each linear feeder will deliver some product into a feed hopper.

For example in a 10 head Multihead Weigher there will be 10 Linear feeders delivering products to 10 Feed hoppers. After each delivery to the feed hoppers the linear feeders will stop vibrating and wait until the Feed hoppers have emptied their contents into the Weigh hoppers before starting again. Each Weigh Hopper is equipped with a highly accurate load cell. This load cell will calculate the weight checking machine of product in the weigh hopper.

The processor in the Multihead Weigher will then calculate the best combination of available weights required to achieve the desired target weight.

The stand or fall of food hygiene and food packaging machinery are inseparable.

When packaged goods are at the store, the plastic packaging keeps the food fresh and prevents allergens and bacteria from spreading or contaminating other foods.

 

Use high quality packaging equipment processing to protect goods, to avoid the bacterial growth and invasion, more and more studies showed that the stand or fall of food hygiene and food packaging machine are inseparable.

The use of plastic packaging protects foods including meats, cheeses, and prepared entrees from cross-contamination and potential damages before it gets into the hands of the consumer.

Hardware including nuts, bolts, and screws can be packaged by sealing machines without damaging the packaging or the products. Meat and poultry need to be specially sealed to prevent the spread of diseases.

The structure of the feeding machine

Twin screw feeders are generally used where extreme flushing of powders can occur or the complete opposite with cohesive powders like pigments or those with a high resin content, which require a large entrainment area to enhance flow. The one main advantage of twin screws is the fact the faces run together and not edge to edge such that a self cleaning effect is the result. Also the pulsing effect is reduced at the outlet, particularly important with sluggish powders.

Solid screws take the form of a continuous Archimedean spiral with a shaft running throughout the screw. The vast majority of applications use this design principle. Even with the flavour powders usually associated with the snack industry solid screws are used, the only additional feature given to the screw are breaker bars set on to the screw in the trough area to break up any dead area that may form in the trough.

On occasions wire screws can be used, which take the form of a helix spring manufactured from square section material. This type can only be employed for very difficult fibrous materials, which need a larger entrainment area in the screw, i.e. minimum blade width and no centre shaft. It should be noted that wire screws have minimum surface area, which does not support serious build up of cohesive powders.

Proper packing is to keep fresh and consumer spending.

The packing industry is committed to keeping food fresh and safe from contamination throughout processing and delivery. For refrigerated products, proper packaging is crucial to keeping them fresh and able for consumer consumption.

 

Food industry production of businesses, in choosing a packaging machine manufacturers, should pay attention to its function and performance, whether can be regular maintenance and inspection equipments safety and hygiene conditions, for packaging material selection, also attaches great importance to the choice of safety and health standard. Healthy production line, to provide customers with the psychological security, more comfortable buying has been packaged food.

Plastic packaging is a simple, cost-effective method for storing and preserving fresh food and other products. Lightweight yet durable enough to store sharp objects without being punctured. While a plastic bag sealing machine is typically used in the food industry, it has been used in the packing industry for many years.

The significant demands placed on weighing and control operations in loss-in-weight feeding

In practice, with today’s advanced weighing and control technologies, reliably high performance accuracy is routinely realized, notwithstanding the significant demands placed on weighing and control operations in loss-in-weight feeding.

Loss-in-weight feeding systems are available for the complete range of rates encountered in plastics compounding and extrusion operations.Any feeding device suitable to the process material can be employed (e.g., screw, auger, vibrating tray, etc.).

 

Under the loss-in-weight feeder principle, moment-to-moment differences in weight matter, not absolute weight.Thus, for the purpose of feed rate control, tare becomes irrelevant.Considering the fact that loss-in-weight feeding involves the accurate detection of small, moment-to-moment changes in system weight while simultaneously weighing a relatively massive feeding system, the demands on the weighing system are substantial.

Such measurement requires the highest possible levels of resolution, linearity and stability along with sophisticated filtering and signal processing to extract meaningful weight data from spurious disturbances such as jostling or ambient vibration in the process environment.

A common machine used to package goods into bags as part of a production line

A vertical form fill seal machine, also known as a VFFS, is a common machine used to package goods into bags as part of a production line. Just as the name suggests, this machine starts by helping to form the bag from roll stock. Then, the bag is filled with product and sealed in preparation for shipment. It can be used with either liquids or dry goods with all types of products and packaging.

The vertical form fill seal machine works to form, fill and seal the bag from roll stock. These machines are available in a number of sizes, including dual and single web.

In recent years, the vertical form fill seal machine has been developed to be considerably more compact. It is good for working with products that may be difficult to handle manually, such as liquids, grains, chips and certain types of food.

In some cases, this can be filling the package with nitrogen to increase product shelf life.

About the loss-in-weight feeders

Loss-in-weight feeders require periodic refill from an external device such as a screw conveyor, bin activator, pneumatic conveyor, slide gate valve, or rotary valve.

 

A loss-in-weight feeder consists of three components: a scale with a dedicated controller to weigh material; a feed mechanism (screw, vibrating tray, etc.) with a variable-speed drive to introduce material into the process; and an integral weigh hopper for material storage.

As the name suggests weight feeder, the unit measures a loss in weight over a certain period of time and adjusts the feed mechanism output accordingly.

A typical accuracy statement for a loss-in-weight feeder specifies repeatability as a percentage of the sample-size at a given statistical confidence level.Compared to the feeding time, the refill time needs to be as short as possible to maximize the percentage of time the feeder is under gravimetric control.