Pillow cutting extruder machine
AssigneeAmerican Extrusion International
InventorRichard Jarvis Warner
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
The pillow cutter of a food product extrusion system is provided with motor driven roller means designed to pull filled, or unfilled, extrusions, including hollow tubes, or ropes, of extruded food material from the extrusion die head. The ropes are then cut in various shapes such as square, diamond or triangle pillows, sticks or bars. The roller means constitute rotatable base rollers sized to effect telescopic assembly with removable, interchangeable, tubular, cylindrical cutter sleeves engraved on the outer peripheral surface of the sleeves with variable cutting patterns so the user of the system can optionally change the cutting patterns by selective choice of cutter sleeves.
Claims10
In a pillow cutter of the type that pulls ropes of extruded material from the extrusion head of an extruder, the improvement of
- a pair of base rollers permanently mounted in the pillow cutter,
- removable, interchangeable sleeves telescopically assembled and mounted on said base rollers,
- each said sleeve comprising a tubular cylindrical article having an inside diameter sized to telescopically fit on a corresponding base roller, and
- each said sleeve having an outer peripheral surface engraved with a cutting pattern selected from the group of geometric patterns including square, diamond, bell, and triangle pillows, sticks and bars,
- whereby the user may achieve selective pattern changes by interchanging the sleeves on the base rollers.
A pillow cutting system in an extrusion line for extruding food products such as snack foods, pastas, cereals and pet food, comprising,
- a vertical mixer having means for adding moisture to raw material such as corn,
- a bucket elevator for conveying the raw material from the vertical mixer,
- an extruder hopper receiving the raw material from the bucket elevator,
- an extruder fed by said hopper having means for gelatinizing the raw material and for forming a tube through an extrusion die head and discharging the tube in the form of a continuous rope,
- a pillow cutter having a roller nip pulling the rope from the extrusion die head,
- said pillow cutter having a pair of fixed base rollers rotatably mounted and motor driven, and
- removable interchangeable tubular cutter sleeves telescopically mounted and carried on said fixed base rollers,
- each said cutter sleeve having a peripheral surface formed with a cutting pattern so that paired sets of cutter sleeves may be interchangeably selected to selectively change the cutting patterns forming the final product.
A pillow cutter for the extrusion line of a food processing system,
- motor driven roller means, and
- interchangeable tubular cylindrical sleeves telescopically and removable mounted on said roller means,
- said sleeves having selected cutting patterns formed on the outer peripheral surfaces thereof so that the user may optionally change the cutting patterns by removing and changing the sleeves on the roller means.
An extrusion system for extruding food products comprising, an extruder having a die head gap through which raw material is extruded and discharged in the form of a rope, and
- a cutting means for cutting and shaping the rope into selected shapes selected from the group of geometric patterns including square, round, diamond and triangle patterns, and sticks and bars,
- said cutting means comprising a set of rotatable motor driven base rollers,
- and a plurality of removable, interchangeable, cylindrical, tubular sleeves slidably telescopically mounted on said base rollers,
- said sleeves having cutting patterns formed on the outer peripheral surfaces thereof,
- whereby different cutting patterns may be selectively chosen by changing sleeves on the base rollers.
Cutting means for an extrusion line pillow cutter comprising
- a set of base rollers adapted to be motor driven rotationally,
- a plurality of sleeves,
- each sleeve being a tubular cylindrical article having an inside diameter sized to telescopically slide into co-rotatable assembly on the periphery of a corresponding one of said base rollers,
- each pair of matched sleeves forming together with one another a cutting nip for pulling and cutting a rope of extruded material from the extrusion head in various shapes.
Cutting means as defined in claim 8 wherein said sleeves have peripheral surfaces formed and shaped to define cutting surfaces selected from the group including square, round, diamond, and triangle configurations, and sticks and bars.
Cutting means as defined in claim 9 and guide means in pre-set alignment with said cutting surfaces for directing a rope into the nip of a selected pair of sleeves.
Cutting means as defined in claim 10 wherein said guide means has a plurality of guide openings and said base rollers have a corresponding plurality of sets of sleeves so that a plurality of ropes are cut in different patterns simultaneously.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.