US 4,979,418 A · Food processing apparatus

Abstract

A method and apparatus are disclosed for efficiently cutting food items, such as potatoes, into helical strips. The food items are provided seriatim to the cutting assembly from a conveyor system fed by a trough shaker or other singulator device. Food items on the conveyor are aligned longitudinally and are then impaled on small spikes protruding from the conveyor so that they maintain the longitudinal orientation during their travel to a feed roller portion of the system. The feed rollers firmly grip the food items by their peripheries and advance them into the rotary cutting assembly. This assembly includes a helically shaped cutting member defining at a leading edge thereof a slicing blade and supporting on its front surface a plurality of perpendicularly extending scoring blades. The helically shaped cutting member is mounted at its periphery by being threadedly received in a helical thread cut in an annular holder. This holder, in turn, is affixed to a toothed drive ring which is rotatably mounted in a cutting assembly housing. This composite assembly is removably mounted in the apparatus and the toothed drive ring driven by a drive gear that extends through an opening in the housing. The apparatus cuts food items quickly and efficiently and includes features designed to minimize cutting stresses that may impair the structural integrity of the resulting products.

Claims18

Dependent claims

A cutting assembly for a food processing apparatus comprising:

a unitary helical disk-like cutter element adapted to slice food items into helical strips through unidirectional rotation, and having a longitudinal axis, a front surface, an inner edge and an outer periphery, said outer periphery being disposed a substantially uniform radial distance from the longitudinal axis;
said cutter element having a trailing edge and a leading radially extending slicing edge, the slicing edge being substantially flush with the cutter element;
and
a plurality of scoring blades mounted on said front surface and extending substantially perpendicularly away therefrom for concentrically scoring the food item before the item is sliced by said leading slicing edge.

1 more element

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Food processing apparatus

Life of this patent

Food processing apparatus

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims18