Three axis portioning method
AssigneeJohn Bean Technologies Corporation
InventorsKwang S. Kim, Stan Wijts, Norman A. Rudy
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A method for portioning foodstuffs in three dimensions includes scanning the foodstuff to be portion, generating a three-dimensional map of the foodstuff, then comparing the generated three-dimensional map of the foodstuff with the desired shape which is stored in the memory of a computer. A computer then determines a particular cutting path in three dimensions in order to arrive at the predetermined shape, followed by a cutting in one direction to fix at least one dimension of the foodstuff, then determining whether the foodstuff is within the tolerance limits. The foodstuff is thereafter cut along its other dimensions to arrive at a portion trimmed along three dimensions.
Claims45
A method for determining the cutting path for portioning three-dimensional foodstuffs in accordance with one or more predetermined three-dimensional shapes executed on a computer having a central processing unit, the method comprising:
- using said computer to obtain a three-dimensional model of an unportioned foodstuff corresponding to the three-dimensional shape of the unportioned foodstuff;
- using said computer to compare the three-dimensional model to at least one user-desired predetermined three-dimensional shape of a portioned foodstuff of user-desired predetermined physical parameters;
- using said computer to compute one or more cutting paths to portion the unportioned foodstuff into the at least one user-desired predetermined three-dimensional shape of the portioned foodstuff to optimize the value realized from the unportioned foodstuff.
A computer controlled method for cutting three-dimensional portions from a three-dimensional foodstuff in accordance with one or more user-desired predetermined three-dimensional shapes, comprising:
- scanning an unportioned foodstuff and using a computer to produce a three-dimensional image of the unportioned foodstuff corresponding to the three-dimensional shape of the unportioned foodstuff;
- using the computer to compare the three-dimensional image of the unportioned foodstuff with one or more predetermined three-dimensional shapes of user-desired predetermined physical parameters;
- using the computer to compute one or more cutting paths to portion the unportioned foodstuff into the one or more user-desired predetermined three-dimensional shapes to maximize the value realized from the unportioned foodstuff;
- and
- cutting the unportioned foodstuff according to the computed one or more cutting paths to produce one or more three-dimensional portions of the one or more user-desired predetermined three-dimensional shapes.
A method for cutting portions from a foodstuff workpiece, comprising:
- (a) scanning the foodstuff workpiece and using a computer to produce a three-dimensional model of the scanned workpiece corresponding to the three-dimensional shape of the foodstuff workpiece;
- (b) using the computer to compare the three-dimensional model of the scanned workpiece with one or more user-desired predetermined three-dimensional shapes of user-desired predetermined physical parameters, wherein one of said physical parameters comprises one or more desired predetermined thicknesses;
- (c) using the computer to compute a cutting path to cut the workpiece into portions of the one or more user-desired predetermined three-dimensional shapes, each portion being of one of the desired predetermined thicknesses;
- and
- (d) cutting the workpiece according to the computed cutting path.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.