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AssigneeFormax, Inc.
InventorsArthur A. Johnson, Scott A. Lindee, Glenn A. Sandberg
Estimating the term…
A versatile high speed slicing machine moves first and second food loaves along parallel loaf paths into a slicing station where both loaves are sliced by a cyclically driven knife blade. There are independent loaf feed drives so that slices cut from one loaf may be thicker than slices from the other. The conveyor/transfer system onto which food loaves are deposited as cut includes a receiver located below the slicing station; a lift mechanism moves the receiver down during slicing so that slices always fall about the same distance after being cut. The receiver includes a plural-belt horizontal receiver conveyor with recieving pin wheels located between the belts that periodically discharges groups of food loaf slices onto a deceleration conveyor, from which the groups are fed onto a multi-belt scale conveyor. The scale conveyor is aligned with two receiver weighing grids, each grid including plural grid elements interleaved one-for-one with the scale conveyor belts. In each machine cycle a group of food loaf slices is deposited on a grid and weighed. Two slice groups are usually weighed individually and simultaneously. The group weights control two classifier transfer conveyors.
An improved high speed food loaf slicing machine including a slicing station, in which a knife blade is driven cyclically along a predetermined cutting path, and food loaf feed means for feeding a food loaf into the slicing station for repetitive slicing of the food loaf,
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.