Food Processing - July 2008 - (Page 33) product is gently and efficiently guided through infeed, weighing and discharge sections and into its intended package. Versatile configurations The possibilities for engineering a weighing solution are nearly endless. There’s no single solution for a single application, such as filling the multiple sections in a prepared “TV dinner”-type meal. “This can be done in a few different ways, starting with a multi-product, multi-outlet type of configuration,” says Brian Barr, sales manager for Heat and Control Inc.’s (www.heatandcontrol.com) packaging systems division, Hayward, Calif., which includes the Ishida combination weigher line. For example, buckets and discharges can be divided into two or three sections, so one machine can fill a separate protein, vegetable and starch into a single tray. Barr says this may or may not be the desired configuration, depending upon a customer’s line and speed requirements, because three weighers can also be used in a “single product, single foodprocessing.com outlet” mode, one for each meal component, for higher throughput. Additionally, he explains, a “multi-product, single outlet” configuration is typically the choice for blending products in which the net package is a mixture, such as mixed nuts. The buckets do the weighing for multiple types of nuts, and the mixing occurs at the discharge. Multiple discharges are one of food processors’ favorite tricks, says Triangle’s Bergholt. “You can take four of your 18 buckets that have known weights in them, and use those four to make up a good package. And out of the remaining 14, you have the machine pick another good combination from four different buckets at the same time. That way you can make discharges twice as fast as you have to weigh and refill those buckets.” The combinations are seemingly endless, if not infinite. On a machine with six weigh buckets above combining into 12 chambers below, there are a mere 4,096 possible combinations. Compare that to one with nine weigh buckets above feeding 18 chambers, which has a quarter-million possible combinations, according to Bergholt. July 2008 food processing • 33 http://www.heatandcontrol.com http://www.heatandcontrol.com http://foodprocessing.com
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