Multi-Track Food Slicing With Variable Thickness Synchronization
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing slicing methods for elongated food products require extensive trimming cuts to equalize unequal lengths, leading to inefficiencies such as incomplete slicing, empty packages, and wasted segments, reducing throughput and yield.
Innovation Solution
A method and slicing machine that adjusts slice thickness based on product caliber length, ensuring equal slicing of products with different lengths without extensive trimming, optimizing yield and preventing empty packages by synchronizing slicing across all tracks.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If trimming cuts are performed to equalize product caliber lengths, then slicing can proceed uniformly across all tracks, but product yield is reduced due to removed segments
Solution Approach 1:
The patent changes the parameter of slice thickness dynamically based on the length of each product caliber. The control unit adjusts the slice thickness for each track individually, allowing longer calibers to be sliced with greater thickness and shorter calibers with smaller thickness, thereby eliminating the need for trimming cuts while maintaining uniform slicing progression across all tracks.
2Productivity
If product calibers of different lengths are sliced simultaneously on multiple tracks, then throughput is improved, but empty packages are produced when shorter calibers are exhausted before longer ones
Solution Approach 1:
The system dynamically adjusts slice thickness parameters for each track based on real-time detection of product caliber lengths. This ensures that tracks with shorter calibers produce appropriately sized portions that complete simultaneously with tracks having longer calibers, preventing empty packages while maintaining high throughput.
Solution Approach 2:
The control unit receives feedback from length detection devices that measure the length of each product caliber before it enters the slicing zone. Based on this feedback, the control unit calculates and adjusts the appropriate slice thickness for each track, enabling synchronized completion of all product calibers and preventing empty packages.
3Loss of time
If slice thickness is increased for longer product calibers, then fewer slices are produced and slicing time is reduced, but portion weight may exceed requirements
Solution Approach 1:
The control unit precisely calculates the required slice thickness for each product caliber based on its detected length and the target number of portions. This precise parameter adjustment ensures that even with variable slice thicknesses, each portion meets the required weight specifications while optimizing slicing time.
Data Source
AI summary
The disclosure relates to a method for slicing food products formed as product calibers using a slicing machine, comprising: arranging multiple product calibers on a feeding unit, wherein at least two of the product calibers have different lengths, feeding, by the feeding unit, the at least two product calibers along a feeding direction to a cutting unit, and slicing, by the cutting unit, the at least two product calibers into slices to form portions, wherein each portion comprises one or more slices. The method further comprises determining, based on length of at least two product calibers a first slice thickness for a first product caliber of the at least two product calibers and a second slice thickness for a second product caliber of the at least two product calibers, wherein the first product caliber before slicing has a greater length than the second product caliber, and wherein the first slice thickness is determined to be greater than the second slice thickness, so that after slicing an equal number of portions from the first product caliber and the second product caliber a length difference between the first product caliber and the second product caliber is less than before slicing. The disclosure further relates to a slicing machine.