Baking & Snack - December 2017 - 74

PANS

While pan developments
and design may not be
exactly rocket science, they
certainly involve a foundation
of physics, mathematics and
chemistry that has extended
their life over time.
else like it in the past 50 years has been so successful and
important, and a lot of people are still not aware of it, so
they're still using heavy pans when there are other options
that are more efficient."
This year, Industrial Bakeware Co. (IBCO) introduced
the T8 pan design for bread pans. "The strapping is its key
innovation that improves the stacking of pans, decreases
the floor space required and provides more effective handling, thereby preventing sliding of pans, which can cause
damage to rims, bases and coating," noted Dan Cochrane,
IBCO managing director. "By preventing the ineffective
stacking of pans, the lifespan and the internal coating can
be extended."
From an automatic pan-handling perspective, its nesting, rigidness and weight affect stacking and unstacking the
most. "The nesting features will dictate stack stability and
prevent inadvertent contact of the interior of the pan cavity
with the next pan in the stack," said Aaron Burke, territory
manager, GTA/Western Canada, ABI Ltd. "The rigidity of
the pan will determine its life expectancy in the automated environment. A rigid pan can be picked and placed far
more precisely than a warped or weakened pan."
He added rigidity, in combination with the nesting feature design, will also determine the height of the stack, ensuring that the bottom-most pan will not deform under the
stack weight.

Shorter baking time
Inside the oven, Mr. Tingley said, American Pan's ePans
typically decrease a 9-minute bake time by about 40 seconds. "When you put less mass through the oven, one of
two things is going to happen - either you're going to
shorten the baking time and speed up the belt or conveyor,
or you're reducing the overall temperature in the oven," he
observed. "We estimate the pan pays for itself within its
lifespan through energy savings alone."
With lighter, more durable pans coupled with gentler handling, Mr. Tingley added that the company's pan
straightening business has declined dramatically - down
to half the volume of a few years ago. Likewise, coatings
have become more resilient. "We used to get 300 releases
on average for glaze, and now it's 600 releases," he added.

74 Baking & Snack December 2017 / www.bakingandsnack.com

Vision systems, quick-change tools and advances in robotics provide gentler
pan handling that saves money in the long run.
ABI Ltd.

IBCO provides weight reduction designs such as perforations in the strapping and lighter gauge Alusteel with
reinforcements. Mr. Cochrane said the company also relies
on an external black substrate coating application to increase pan heat absorptivity and bake performance and to
improve oven efficiencies.
Unlike a decade ago, almost every pan material used by
American Pan now comes custom-produced from the mill.
Although the metals' chemistry and the process for making these pans remains proprietary, Mr. Tingley estimated
today's high-strength materials are 2.5 times stronger than
a forming steel used in the past.
When designing pans, a panoply of other priorities plays
a role. "We want to understand the process and any related
issues," Mr. Tingley said. "We need to understand how the
pans are being used and how they're being washed. We
need to understand the operational side. We love to hear
any issues our customers have."
He often inquires if pans are wearing too quickly or if
there are consistent damage points or damage on the pans.
"If we can get into that loop, we can design pans that address any issues they had in the past," Mr. Tingley noted.
Mr. Cochrane said IBCO relies on multiple tools - 3-D
scanning, modeling and printing - to streamline the product development process into days that had taken weeks in
the past.
Despite such progress, pan-stacking, unstacking and
storage remain a critical concern in many operations. "One
of the challenges we constantly see at bakeries is effective
pan handling on lines running multiple bread products,"
Mr. Cochrane said. "Product changes can cause damage to
the pan substrate as well as the coating. While bun tray designs are being successfully stacked through innovative designs, we see that tin bread pan sets are still subject to either
bad pan management or ineffective stacking techniques."
Pan design is also affected by how high they are stacked
when stored - in some cases 80 pans or more atop of one
another - and whether they are stacked face up or face
down. "We need to select the right materials and overall

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