Food Product Loader with Massaging Frames for Chicken Tenders
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current food process lines face bottlenecks due to slow machinery speeds and clogging issues in dispensers, particularly when handling boneless, skinless chicken tenders, which are difficult to handle due to their shape, limpness, and slipperiness, leading to inefficient transfer from bulk hoppers to conveyor belts.
Innovation Solution
A food product loader system with an itemizing componentry that includes endless belt conveyors, massaging frame assemblies, and a recirculation system for spraying solutions, which helps in aligning and spacing chicken tenders on conveyor belts, preventing clogging, and ensuring automatic and efficient transfer.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If massaging frames are driven at slow rotation rates, then food product pieces are handled gently without damage, but the overall food process line throughput is reduced due to bottlenecking
Solution Approach 1:
The system divides the food product stream into multiple parallel lanes, each with its own dispenser and massaging frame assembly. This segmentation allows independent operation of each lane, enabling the overall system throughput to be increased by adding parallel processing paths rather than increasing the speed of individual massaging frames.
2Productivity
If dispensers operate at high speed, then food process line throughput is increased, but clogging occurs with bunched pieces of food product in the dispensers
Solution Approach 1:
The massaging frame assemblies perform preliminary action by gently manipulating and separating food product pieces before they enter the dispensers. This pre-separation prevents bunching and clogging in the dispensers, allowing them to operate at higher speeds without blocking issues.
Solution Approach 2:
Sensors detect when a lane is empty of food product pieces, providing feedback that indicates potential clogging in that dispenser. This triggers automatic plungers to un-block and clear the clogged dispenser, maintaining continuous operation.
3Ease of operation
If boneless, skinless chicken tenders are transferred from bulk hoppers to conveyor belts manually, then handling flexibility is maintained, but automation level is reduced and efficiency is lowered
Solution Approach 1:
The system enables self-service automated handling where chicken tenders are automatically fed from bulk hoppers through massaging frame assemblies and dispensers onto conveyor belts without manual intervention. The automatic plungers and sensors work together to maintain continuous operation, achieving both automation and efficiency.
4Device complexity
If multiple food product pieces are dispensed through a single funnel, then device complexity is reduced, but clogging occurs due to pieces bunching together
Solution Approach 1:
The system segments the food product flow into multiple separate funnels, with each funnel dedicated to a specific lane. This segmentation prevents pieces from bunching in a single funnel, maintaining reliable flow continuity while managing complexity through modular repetition of the funnel-dispenser assembly.
Data Source
AI summary
A food-product loader has a conveyor passing through its cabinet, and the cabinet is formed with a bulk hopper. The loader is loaded with elongate pieces of food-product by way of dumping a heaping mass of the food-product pieces into the bulk hopper all at one time. The loader ultimately handles the heap of food-product pieces such that, the loader loads the pieces onto the conveyor in neat lanes, with individual pieces slightly spaced apart from one another. To do this, the loader is constructed with a series or array of soft-sided dispensing sleeves or funnels which are mechanically massaged to tease out one piece at a time, and only one piece at a time.