High Speed Loaf Cake Cutting

Challenge

First, our customer asked us to build a high-speed loaf cake cutting system. This machine would need to make 900 slices per minute.  It must be capable of cutting iced and frosted cakes as well as some products with ingredients like nuts and chocolate chips.

The customer’s primary concern was making clean, quality cuts while maximizing loaf yield.

Lastly, cakes are free in sets of 4 from a spiral freezer that cannot be stop for any reason.

Project Solution

Due to the high speed and volume of this application, Marchant Schmidt recommended a gang-cutting solution.This slowed down the cutting operation and gave more control over the slice discharge.

We begin by grouping 3 sets of 4 loaves so we can present 12 loaves to the cutter simultaneously. This is attain automatically through a series of staging conveyors and a wide diverging conveyor.

Also, ultrasonic knife technology is ideal for sticky applications and processes with semi-hard inclusions.

In the first cut station, the butt ends are separate and drop away as the loaf is carry to the slice-cut section. Cut count and portion size are set on the HMI and are easily retrieved from saved recipes.

Additionally, discharge can be configured as individual slices, shingled continuous slices, or sets of shingled slices.

Since this is a batch cutter that pauses with each set of 12 loaves, it was important that we developed a 10-pocket conveyor system that accumulates, closes gaps, and provides a continuous stream of portions to the robotic packaging system downstream.

Furthermore, for a more in-depth discussion on your high-speed loaf cake cutting application, contact Marchant Schmidt today!