Food Processing - July 2008 - (Page 32) By Bob Sperber, Contributing Editor The Perfect Combination Computerized combination weighers scale up profits by eliminating product give-away. production machine or system sitting on the plant floor can seem so reliable, so second nature, that it can be taken for granted. It’s easy to overlook how it actually solves a problem, or how it might be improved upon to solve future problems. Computerized combination weighers represent such an example. They may seem like black boxes, calculating massive amounts of product weights and popping out perfect packages. Simply defined, a combination weigher is a machine with several hoppers (or buckets or heads) that hold a known portion of the finished product. They discharged their contents into a final package in just the right combination to provide a desired net weight. Aside from incremental advances in sanitary quick-disconnects, actuators, stepper motors and microprocessors, these machines’ basic technology hasn’t changed since the early 1980s, when they bowed in the marketplace. But there are still many smaller plants that use labor-intensive manual 32 • Food Processing July 2008 A operations or even automated volumetric or net-weight systems that the larger food processors have left behind. “Before combination weighers, volumetric or single-filltype machinery would stop filling when it got up to just under the right weight – that’s when you stopped feeding,” says Steve Bergholt, chief engineer for Triangle Package Machinery Co. (www.trianglepackage.com), Chicago. “You just had to hope it filled up to the right weight.” For packages consisting of pieces, this was a slow and inaccurate solution, and prone to lost profits due to product give-away. Consider how eight 2-oz. drumsticks can complete a 16-oz. tray pack, but if one is a fraction underweight, it will take a whole, ninth drumstick to complete the package. In contrast, combination weighers combine, for example, heavy and light drumsticks, or any product that’s packaged in pieces. While the technology is well established, it still takes some specialized knowledge and expertise to ensure that the FoodProcessing.com http://www.trianglepackage.com http://foodprocessing.com
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