Food portioning system

An apparatus for producing packaged single serve portions of extrudable semi-liquid or semi-solid food products of various shapes and thicknesses, comprising:

• an indexing conveyor having a generally horizontal conveying surface operating wider the control of a downstream indexing drive;
• a bottom packaging material dispensing and positioning device operative to place cut pieces of bottom packaging material on upstream indexed surface portions of the conveyor;
• a food product dispensing head operative to deposit pre-measured quantities of a food product onto the bottom pieces of packaging material indexed to a position beneath the dispensing head;
• a top packaging material dispensing and positioning device operative to place cut pieces of top packaging material onto the food products indexed to a position beneath the top packaging material dispensing and positioning device;
• a product forming press operative to press the food product into layers between the bottom and top cut pieces of packaging material indexed to a position beneath the product forming press;
• and
• at least one of the packaging material dispensing devices is fed from packaging material roll stock and comprises:
• a support plate receiving, a measured end portion of a web of material from a roll, the web having a width equal to the width of the material piece;
• a clamping cutter operative to cut the web on the support plate to the length of the material piece;
• and
• a material piece transfer device operative to move the cut piece of material from the support plate and place the piece on one of the surface portion of the conveyor and the dispensed food product.