Meat&Poultry - February 2011 - 40

PRECISION STUFFING

high-quality product. This enables the robots to run at higher efficiency. Canbus technology allows us to seamlessly integrate with upstream and downstream equipment, including robotics.” Reiser says weight control, productivity [and the ability to monitor it], hygiene and reduced costs will drive future evolution. “Customers are looking to increase portioning accuracy and decrease giveaway, and any additional technology or technology costs will have to achieve that goal,” he adds. “We will need to continue to make the machines easier to operate and lines will need to operate with less people.” Risk control will remain at the forefront, he adds. “Our designs begin with sanitation and hygiene in mind – simple and easy to clean,” he continues. “Technology advances have allowed us to make our machines simpler. Information is displayed graphically in pictures. Diagnostic packages tell customers when there is a problem and maintenance is due.

Some of our producers are already monitoring their machines from the office, or let us monitor their machines from our office. Production data is being gathered at the machines, ready to be exported to the customer’s production control systems, or simply to spreadsheets.”

Stuffer evolution
The role stuffers play has changed significantly over the past decade, says Alan Miller, president of Risco USA Corporation, South Easton, Mass. “Although still used for traditional products, where an operator slides on a casing [over] links, they are being used as an integral part of complex systems,” he adds. “The stuffer could be controlling a whole groundbeef line where none of the remaining pieces of equipment are Risco, or actually be a slave within a system being controlled by even a piece of our competitive equipment.” This required adopting an interface and follows industry norms that has all the inputs and outputs to control or controlled by other lines systems or machines, Miller says. “This interface is now fitting to all Risco stuffers. As a result, many are being used in Stork lines worldwide, where they are plug-and-play,” he adds.
RS 505 vacuum filler is controlled by a central computer, and all the filling parameters can be recalled and shown on the main display. (Photo courtesy of Risco
USA Corporation)

Many of Risco’s competitive sausage stuffers run their own software, such as Windows. These are great systems for the control and visual aspects that make a good impression on a stuffer, he says. “However, industrial controls required simple cleanand-direct commands that have little reason to crash [Windows],” he adds. “This increases reliability and simplicity when integrating a machine into a system. Understanding this: the Risco interface follows these norms allowing for ease of integration.” Robotics are being used more in the sausage industry, especially with visual recognition becoming so refined, Miller says. “Visual systems that see a sausage, grab it and place it the right way in a tray are becoming much more cost effective,” he adds. In addition, there is no magic to all this, when one understands the stuffer with servo drives, like a robotic arm, knows where the pump components are, Miller continues. “For example, it knows where the product pump is exactly, so it knows when to stop to give the right portion,” he says. “At any time during that cycle, it knows when to trigger the next process. So stuffer or robot, they are all speaking the same language and can be interfaced to speak to each other.” The future of stuffers is clear, Miller says. “The basic machine will always be required by the small and medium processor that makes a simple, high-quality and traditional product,” he adds. “Hand made will never be replaced as this remains an art form. However, for the high-volume production of sausage and meat products, speed and efficiency are needed to reduce and control production costs and selling price. Here, the stuffer will turn into a pump set that is fitted into the system like a jigsaw piece – by itself hardly recognizable, but when fitted in its place, a complete picture-system is completed.” ■
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