Conical Rolling Rollers for Uniform Food Dough Thickness
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Existing methods for rolling food dough into disk-shaped forms often result in slipping between the dough and rollers, leading to uneven thickness and potential damage, especially when dealing with tougher doughs or those containing fillings, and require inefficient multiple rolling steps and manual handling.
Innovation Solution
A method and apparatus utilizing swiveling and rotating rollers with controlled speed, where the rollers rotate at a speed higher than their passive speed, and a cradle that ascends and descends to maintain consistent pressure, ensuring uniform thickness and reducing slipping, while also allowing for the formation of disk-shaped dough with fillings and decorative particles.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Manufacturing precision
If rolling rollers are used to flatten food dough, then the dough can be transformed into a flattened shape, but slipping occurs between the dough and rollers causing uneven thickness and potential damage
Solution Approach 1:
The patent employs conical-shaped rolling rollers with curved surfaces instead of flat cylindrical rollers. The conical shape creates a progressive pressing action from the apex toward the base, ensuring uniform contact and pressure distribution across the dough surface, thereby preventing slipping and achieving even thickness without damage.
Solution Approach 2:
The rolling rollers are designed to rotate at a controlled speed that is actively regulated during the rolling process. The rotation speed is optimized to maintain sufficient friction between the rollers and dough while preventing excessive speed that would cause slipping, thus ensuring both uniform thickness and reliable operation.
2Manufacturing precision
If rolling rollers press the food dough to flatten it, then the dough can be shaped, but it takes a long time to achieve uniform thickness especially with tougher doughs
Solution Approach 1:
The conical shape of the rolling rollers enables a progressive deformation mechanism where the apex initially contacts the dough center and gradually moves outward toward the periphery. This geometric design accelerates the flattening process by distributing pressure dynamically, achieving uniform thickness faster than traditional cylindrical rollers, especially for tougher dough varieties.
Solution Approach 2:
The rolling rollers are designed to maintain continuous contact with the dough surface throughout the rolling process, eliminating idle periods and ensuring uninterrupted pressing action. The conical geometry ensures that the entire roller surface contributes to the flattening operation simultaneously, maximizing productivity while maintaining uniform thickness.
3Manufacturing precision
If multiple rolling steps are used to process filled dough, then the dough can be flattened, but the process becomes inefficient and complex
Solution Approach 1:
The conical rolling rollers are designed to handle multiple types of dough simultaneously, including filled dough varieties, in a single rolling operation. The rollers can process different dough types (pizza, bread, pie) and configurations (filled, unfilled, layered) without requiring changeover to different rolling mechanisms, thereby simplifying the overall process while maintaining flattened shape quality.
Solution Approach 2:
The rolling process is optimized so that the conical rollers can perform multiple functions in sequence during a single pass: initial flattening, filling distribution, and final shaping. This segmented functional approach within a unified rolling action eliminates the need for separate rolling steps for different processing stages.
4Manufacturing precision
If rolling rollers are used on tougher doughs, then the dough can be flattened, but the dough may be damaged due to excessive pressure and slipping
Solution Approach 1:
The conical shape distributes pressing pressure progressively from the apex to the base of the roller, avoiding concentrated point loads that could damage tough dough. The curved surface ensures smooth contact and gradual deformation, preventing tearing or damage while achieving the desired flattened shape even with resistant dough varieties.
Solution Approach 2:
The rotation speed and pressing force of the rolling rollers are dynamically adjusted based on dough characteristics. For tougher doughs, the system optimizes the rotation speed and pressure parameters to provide sufficient flattening force while remaining below the damage threshold, thereby protecting the dough structure while achieving uniform thickness.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
This approach enables efficient rolling of food dough into uniform, disk-shaped products with reduced stress and time, improving productivity and allowing for complex shapes and filled doughs, while simultaneously addressing the issues of slipping and uneven thickness.
Implementation Method 1
the rolling rollers rotate so that they rotate at a speed higher than that when they are passively rotated by the swiveling motion... without causing slipping between the food dough and rolling rollers
Data Source
AI summary
These inventions provide a method and an apparatus for rolling food dough without causing slipping between the food dough and rolling rollers and without causing twisted shrinkages in the food dough, and disk-shaped food dough manufactured by the method. Further, these inventions relate to the disk-shaped food dough manufactured by the method and the apparatus. The apparatus used for the method is comprised of a cradle that can relatively ascend away from and descend toward a table, and conical-shaped rolling rollers rotatably disposed at the cradle, which rollers can swivel. When the food dough is rolled by means of the rolling rollers by pressing the food dough, the rolling rollers rotate so that the speed of the rotation is higher than that when they are passively rotated by the swiveling motion. The relative speed of the descent of the rolling rollers toward the food dough is controlled so that the speed gradually decreases from the initial speed.