Cutting machine for triangle cutting sheets of pastry

A machine for forming croissants, brioches and the like which comprises a pastry flattening stage operable to receive pastry dough and to flatten such dough into a pastry sheet delivered along a given conveyance path;

• a cutting stage having rotatable cutter blades arranged to cut said pastry sheet into a sequence of pastry triangles positioned at respective locations across said conveyance path, said pastry triangles upon being cut from the pastry sheet being oriented with a reference side of each pastry triangle in a first group thereof facing in one given direction with respect to the conveyance path, and with a similar reference side of each pastry triangle in a second group thereof facing in another given direction with respect to the conveyance path;
• a spacing and orienting stage, including an oil bath means, effective to reciprocate on two wheels;
• a carriage reciprocatably moveable along said conveyance path and bearing a plurality of catching elements spaced across the conveyance path in correspondence with the spacing of said pastry triangles, and moveable into engagement with corresponding pastry triangles to move same and moveable out of engagement with said pastry triangles to release same after moving them, said catching elements being rotatably moveable to orient the pastry triangles that they engage with their reference sides facing a common selected direction with respect to the conveyance path, said catching elements being also translatably moveable to position the pastry triangles they engage in a given spacing relation to one another prior to releasing said pastry triangles;
• and a forming stage disposed along the conveyance path to receive said pastry triangles released by said catching elements of the spacing and orienting stage and operable to wrap said pastry triangles into respective coiled configurations;
• said carriage being reciprocatably moveable between a position on the conveyance path where the catching elements engage, and thereby receive the pastry triangles from the cutting stage, to a position on the conveyance path where the catching elements release and thereby deliver the oriented and spaced pastry triangles to the forming stage.