Baking & Snack - December 2008 - 91

SHEETING & LAMINATING

can be produced on one line," he added.
And if a baker wants to run both laminated and
straight sheet dough on an RBS line, Mr. Moye said that
is possible. "If they want to produce a product with no
lamination, we would straight sheet the dough and use
the lamination as simply a conveyance to get to the first
gauge roll set," he explained.
On the other hand, Jim Cummings, president, Tromp
Bakery Systems, Lawrenceville, GA, said some processors
are laminating doughs that others might not expect to
require this process. For example, tortilla processors making sheeted tortillas will laminate the dough to improve
the structure of the product and make it more comparable to a pressed tortilla. Flatbreads and pizza crusts also
can be laminated to give products a better cell structure,
he said. "If you want do preproofed pizza shell, laminating is the best way to go because it gives the product a
longer shelf life in the freezer," Mr. Cummings noted.
NEED FOR SPEED. Faster production speeds are driving the most innovations with sheeting and laminating
equipment, according to Mr. Cummings. "Customers
want lines that can go 150, 170 or 180 ft per minute,
which are speeds that not too long ago people didn't even
consider," he stated.
Products such as tortillas, flatbreads and gorditas are
driving this desire for higher speeds, according to Mr.
Cummings. "Profits on these items are pennies on the
pound, so companies have to produce them quickly," he
said. "With the rising costs of flour and fuel, they have to
make more pieces per hour to make any money."
However, issues arise when running sheeted dough,
which can be as thin as 2 mm, that fast. Dough wants
to float or fly, according to Mr. Cummings. However, he
said Tromp has addressed this issue. The company engineered its machines to be more heavy duty to handle
faster throughputs. "Machines had to be much more
robust because dough tends to do a lot of different things
at that speed," Mr. Cummings added.
Tromp also helps its clients control ingredient costs with
its new flour duster. "It is much more consistent and puts
down a finer, more even layer of flour," he said. "It is also
completely washdown. A lot of companies make washdown flour dusters, but they have rubber rollers in them,
and the rubber roller never gets completely dry so flour
cakes up and becomes messy. We have developed flour
dusters that can be washed down and won't cake up."
RBS often uses the term "beefy" to describe the robustness of its sheeting and laminating equipment. "We have
very thick frames and very large rolls to create the tolerances needed in those applications and to ensure proper
sheet thickness in each gauging location," Mr. Moye said.
This more rugged machine design is also needed to
meet the demands some bakeries put on their sheeting
and laminating lines, such as wanting the ability to run
BAKING & SNACK / December 2008

ᮡ More than 100 recipes can be programmed into this electronic sheeter
to improve its productivity.
RONDO DOGE

the line 24/7 for three weeks at a time and at speeds in
excess of 175 ft per minute, according to Mr. Moye.
MORE ROBUST. Rademaker designed its latest sheeting and laminating lines, known as Sigma, with bigger
shafts and rollers as well as larger bearings and motors.
These features are important to processors looking for
high-speed and long production runs, Mr. Riggle said. "A
client only makes money when he puts his product
in a box and gets it out the door," he noted. "They do
not make money with costly downtime, frequent shutdowns for maintenance or extended time for cleaning.
Rademaker designs a line to be maintained and cleaned
quickly to get back into production."
Rademaker custom-manufacturers its sheeting and laminating equipment to meet its clients' needs, and it has delivered lines that can produce as little as 1,000 lb per hour or as
much as 24,000 lb per hour. Industrial bakers desire sheeting
and laminating lines that require very little effort from the
operators, run for a long time between shutdowns and allow
quick changeovers between products. "Smaller wholesale
bakers want the ability to be flexible in their production to
meet their ever-changing client requests," Mr. Riggle added.
"Therefore, they want a machine that can make a variety of
products with quick changeover.
"Many clients have taken an interest in the efficiency
of the production process since the cost of ingredients
has skyrocketed," he continued. "They are no longer
willing to accept waste and unusable scrap dough as they
did in the past."

Baking & Snack - December 2008

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