July/August 2019

n FOOD PRODUCTION Robotic cheesecake slicer is a cut above the rest C ompetition in the food industry is fierce and the fast pace of business and development means that any advantage a food manufacturer can gain can have a considerable impact on its margins. To satisfy this requirement, a Cornwall-based food machinery manufacturer, Western Mechanical Handling (WMH), has developed an automated inline cell for on- the-fly cutting and slicing of food products of almost any size and shape. “We noticed a growing need in the market for better industrial food-cutting solutions,” explains the company’s technical sales and marketing manager, Helen Northcott. “Until now, industrial food cutting has often been a manual task. Even when automated, most solutions do not allow continuous processing because the robots used require the food to be stationary. As a result, cutting operations often slow down the entire production line, increasing lead times.” WHM believes that its new inline cutting machine marks a turning point. It uses a conveyor belt to connect the production line to the slicing stage and to any subsequent processes. As food trays move along the line, their content is sliced without needing to stop the conveyor belt. The innovative inline cutting system can reduce slicing times substantially, as well as cutting wastage due to its high accuracy and consistency. WMH’s aim was to develop an automated cutting system that would deliver high- quality and high-speed cutting without any interruptions. The machine can cut substances with differing consistencies A novel robotic food-cutting machine is allowing a Somerset dessert manufacturer to slice cheesecakes and other products on-the-fly. The inline system will allow the producer to increase its throughput, as well as widening the range of products that it can cut. WMH’s food-slicing machine uses either one or two robots to cut foodstuffs of almost any size and shape accurately and quickly as they pass along a production line

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