Pressing Chamber Dynamics for Uniform Meat Shaping
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Existing devices for shaping strand-shaped foods, particularly meat, face challenges in achieving uniform slice thickness due to unevenly shaped surfaces, leading to inconsistent weight portions and increased food quantity to ensure compliance with legal weight requirements.
Innovation Solution
A device with a press chamber and press rams that can move relative to each other, allowing for the transformation of the chamber from an initial to a final state to shape the food evenly, enabling easy feeding and removal of the food while maintaining a compact design.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Manufacturing precision
If conventional cutting machines are used to slice linear foods with uneven surfaces, then the cutting process is simple, but the slice thickness and weight become inconsistent
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies preliminary action by shaping the food product into a uniform geometry (such as a parallelepiped) before the cutting process. The forming device compresses and molds the food to create consistent dimensions and surface flatness, ensuring that subsequent slicing produces uniform thickness and weight without requiring complex cutting mechanisms.
2Productivity
If slice thickness is reduced to compensate for uneven surfaces, then more slices can be produced, but the actual food quantity exceeds the stated weight
Solution Approach 1:
By pre-shaping the food into uniform dimensions before cutting, the patent ensures that each slice has consistent weight and that the total food quantity matches the stated package weight. This eliminates the need to reduce slice thickness to compensate for surface irregularities, maintaining both productivity and accurate portion control.
3Manufacturing precision
If multiple press rams are used to shape the food uniformly, then the forming precision improves, but the device complexity and space requirements increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent employs a multi-functional press chamber design where a single press chamber performs both forming and shaping operations. The press rams are integrated into a unified structure that can apply compression forces from multiple directions, achieving uniform food shaping without requiring separate dedicated chambers for each operation, thus reducing overall device complexity.
4Ease of operation
If the press chamber is designed with fixed walls, then the structure is simple, but the food cannot be easily fed into or removed from the chamber
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements dynamic wall design where the press chamber walls are made movable rather than fixed. The walls can be displaced to open or close the chamber, allowing easy feeding of food into the chamber and removal of shaped food after processing. This dynamic structure is integrated with the pressing mechanism, so the same wall movement accomplishes both chamber opening and compression functions.
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
The solution allows for the formation of uniformly shaped food products, reducing personnel and time requirements, improving throughput, and ensuring consistent weight portions without manual repositioning, thus addressing the issue of uneven surface shaping and weight inconsistencies.
Implementation Method 1
the foodstuff can be transformed from an unformed state to a formed state by moving the walls of the pressing chamber which are designed as press rams
Data Source
Figure 1
Figure 2
Figure 2a
AI summary
The invention relates to a device (1) for shaping strip-shaped foodstuff (2), in particular a piece of meat (3), having a) a pressing chamber (18) which is limited by walls (20) and one of which can be moved by means of a pressing device (21, 22, 23, 24) and is designed as a pressing stamp (28, 29, 30, 31), whereby the pressing chamber (18) can be transferred from an initial state with a first enclosed volume to a final state with a second enclosed volume, b) a feed device (15) for feeding the foodstuff (2) into the pressing chamber (18), c) a discharge device (16) for discharging the foodstuff (2) from the pressing chamber (18). In order to provide a device characterised by having a particularly compact structure, a pressing stamp (28) of a first pressing device (21) that comes into contact with the foodstuff (2) located in the pressing chamber (18) is coupled to at least one second pressing device (22) movable in another direction and/or a wall (20) of the pressing chamber (18) in such a way that the second pressing device (22) as a whole and/or the aforementioned wall (20) can be moved together with the pressing stamp (28) of the first pressing device (21) relative to the foodstuff (2). The invention also relates to a method for forming strip-shaped foodstuff (2), in particular a piece of meat (3).