Method and apparatus for uniformly slicing food products

Abstract

A method of cutting food products into uniform thickness slices using a rotary cutting wheel fitted with radially extending, circumferentially spaced, tensioned and forwardly pitched bevel sharpened cutter blades rotating in a cutter plane and extending between a central hub and an annular rim and wherein the blades produce a first velocity of advancement of unsliced food product across the cutting plane for each revolution of the cutting wheel and a given slice thickness during slicing of food product advanced through the cutting plane. The method includes fitting an appropriate number of blades to the rotary cutting wheel to produce the given slice thickness of food products at the operation rotational velocity of the cutting wheel and rotating the cutting wheel at an operational rotational velocity to produce the first velocity of advancement of unsliced food products through the cutting plane of the cutting wheel. The food products are fed to the cutting plane of the blades of the cutting wheel at a second velocity such that the second velocity corresponds closely to about 101.5% of the first velocity as a result of a selection of configuration and tension of the blades so that they have maximum stiffness and resistance to both longitudinal and transverse flexure during cutting of food products. A cutter blade is disclosed wherein the leading edge portion of the blade member is longer than the maximum distance between fastener apertures at each end area of the blades and wherein the straight trailing edge portion of the blade member is shorter than the minimum distance between aperture diameters.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.