Batter machines for food process line machines

A batter coating machine for automatic and/or mechanized food-process lines that receives an infeed of food-product pieces received at an intake end and discharges coated food-product pieces at a discharge end, comprising:

• an elongated vat adapted to contain and be filled, to a given fill level, with a pool of batter;
• a main food-product carrying conveyor adapted to plunge through and out of the pool of batter in a shallow-V shaped path;
• an overhead submerging conveyor adapted to push down on the food-product pieces so that the food-product pieces not only are immersed in the pool of batter and thereby get coated but also do not float and lose conveyance traction with main conveyor;
• and
• a batter pool leveling system comprising:
• a batter-surface height sensor aimed at the discharge end of the batter pool adapted to provide an information signal corresponding to sensed height,
• a controller receiving or polling for the sensor's information signal and adapted with a control configuration whereby determining whether intervention action is warranted or not, and
• when intervention action is determined to be warranted, then sending a control signal to a pump that is connected by piping (1) to a port proximate the discharge end of the vat and (2) to a port proximate the center or intake end of the batter pool, whereby the pump executes the intervention action.