Rotatable Engagement Member for Delicate Food Denesting
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing denesting machines are inefficient and prone to jamming when handling delicate or soft food items like bread, due to friction issues and potential damage during the separation process.
Innovation Solution
A denesting apparatus featuring a rotatable engagement member with a protrusion, such as a plate or blade, and a movable carousel, which selectively separates products from a stack and moves them to an output conveyor, minimizing contact and reducing damage, while a sensor system ensures precise operation.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If a conveyor with cleats and guide rods is used to move products upward, then products can be constrained and separated, but delicate or soft food items become jammed due to friction and may become damaged
Solution Approach 1:
The invention extracts the harmful friction-based constraint mechanism from the system. Instead of using cleats and guide rods that create friction against delicate items, the patent uses a protrusion that selectively engages only the end product of the nested stack, separating it without sustained frictional contact. This removes the source of jamming and damage while maintaining separation effectiveness.
Solution Approach 2:
The protrusion acts as an intermediary element between the drive mechanism and the nested products. Rather than having the conveyor directly contact and friction against delicate items, the protrusion mediates the separation by selectively engaging the end product and transferring motion to the carriage, which then transports the separated item without harmful friction.
2Object-affected harmful factors
If manual denesting is performed, then delicate items can be handled carefully, but the process becomes slow and labour intensive
Solution Approach 1:
The system enables self-service denesting by using the structure of the nested products themselves against the protrusion. The nested items naturally present their end product to the protrusion during conveyance, and the protrusion automatically engages and separates them without requiring external manual intervention, achieving both careful handling and high productivity.
Solution Approach 2:
The invention replaces the manual mechanical handling system with an automated protrusion-carriage mechanism. The protrusion selectively engages the end product and the carriage automatically receives and transports it, substituting human hands with a controlled mechanical system that minimizes damage while increasing processing speed.
3Ease of operation
If a rotatable protrusion is used to engage and separate the end product, then selective separation is achieved, but the mechanism complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The invention uses a rotatable protrusion that dynamically adjusts its engagement with the nested products. The rotation allows the protrusion to naturally engage only the end product based on its position in the nested stack, providing selective separation through dynamic motion rather than complex static mechanisms. The rotation is simple and leverages the natural geometry of nested items.
Data Source
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AI summary
There is disclosed apparatus for denesting or destacking products from a stack, such as slices of bread or other foodstuffs. An input conveyor advances a stack of products in an axial direction to a destacking mechanism such that the end product of the stack is presented to the destacking mechanism. The destacking mechanism comprises a rotating engagement member for engaging the end product of the stack in a direction that is offset from the axial direction to cause separation of the end product from the stack. A movable carriage receives the separated product from the engagement member and carries the separated product to an output conveyor.