Systems with horns that extend into netting chutes and having cooperating deruckers for producing encased products and related devices, methods and computer program products

A method for producing encased products, comprising:

• positioning a portion of a generally tubular horn having a product channel therethrough inside a generally tubular netting chute;
• forming an edible and/or dissolvable generally flat roll of casing material into a generally tubular casing that extends in an axial direction about the horn;
• pumping food emulsion through the horn at a pumping speed;
• serially encasing a desired amount of the food emulsion in different portions of the generally tubular casing material as the food emulsion exits the horn;
• automatically derucking netting from the netting chute during the pumping step using a derucker with a pair of gripping members having a reciprocating stroke cycle including having a forward stroke length whereby the gripping members contact the netting chute with netting held between the derucker gripping members and the chute at a derucker pressure for repeatedly drawing defined lengths of a sleeve of netting material held on the netting chute forward at a discharge end portion of the netting chute during the pumping step;
• automatically braking the netting material proximate the discharge end portion of the netting chute after the derucking step using the derucker by closing the gripping members against the chute with a braking pressure larger than the derucking pressure;
• enclosing the encased food emulsion in the netting material;
• and
• automatically shaping a series of netting enclosed encased food emulsion products to a desired consistent shape based at least in part on the derucking, braking and pumping steps.