Sausage production line

A sausage production line comprising a sausage meat feeder, sausage meat filling and batching means mounted on a frame which includes horizontally extending guides located on a top base of said frame, said guides accommodating a plate carrying vertically extending spindles which shift on a row-by-row basis, and a hydraulic cylinder with a rod coupled kinematically to the spindles to lower said spindles during the course of filling and batching a plurality of block molds with sausage meat, wherein the block mold includes a housing accommodating vertical rows of molds, said housing containing upper lids mounted for movement in horizontal and vertical planes, and lower lids mounted for movement in a horizontal plane, said block mold further including means attached to the housing adapted to press the lower lids against said housing, means for row-by-row shifting of the spindles, chambers for heat and cold treatment of the finished product, means for discharging the finished product from said molds and means for washing the block molds, all arranged in a closed loop in the direction of production flow, the closed loop being formed by step-type conveyors arranged in two parallel rows located in a single plane, the pitch of each of said conveyors being limited by the dimensions of a single block mold, said conveyors serving to move the block molds from said means for filling and batching the sausage meat into the block molds to said chambers for heat and cold treatment of the finished product, to means for discharging the finished product, to means for washing the discharged block molds, and back to said sausage meat filling and batching means.