MU_2018_JulyAugust-HR

30 MACHINERY UPDATE JULY/AUGUST 2018 www.machineryupdate.co.uk
Installation News
Checkweighers ensure
spuds comply at speed
To cope with compliance
issues for its frozen
potato processing
production lines operating at
higher speeds, Lamb Weston/
Meijer has retrofitted five new
Mettler Toledo checkweighers.
The conveyor speed of the
new equipment has been
synchronised to the higher
throughput rates, and can also
be adapted to accommodate
any further increase in
production which is planned
by the Dutch company by 2020.
And to continue to ensure
conformity, products need
to be reliably checked to
make sure they meet the
requirements of net content
laws for packaged products
and to ensure customer
satisfaction – as well as to
eliminate expensive product
giveaway. The automatic
checkweighers are installed
downstream of a multihead
weigher where Lamb Weston’s
French fries are portioned
before ultimately being packed
into 1kg bags.
The bags are then weighed,
with ‘bad’ products being
rejected by a pusher to enable
off-weight products to be
sorted out reliably.
To help this process, a light
barrier monitors whether
the rejection of underweight
or overweight products was
successful. If this is not the
case, a message is displayed
The 1kg bags are weighed and ‘bad’ products rejected by a special pusher
The plant processes potatoes into French fries and other speciality products
in the info section of the 15in
touchscreen terminal. An
immediate conveyor shutdown
and the activation of a
potential-free contact to warn
the production personnel
allows them to easily remove
‘bad products’ from the ‘good
products’ path and then feed
them back into the production
process in the end.
More than one hundred
employees at the Oosterbierum
plant of Lamb Weston ensure
that potatoes are processed
into high-quality pre-fried
frozen French fries and
other potato specialties.
The high-tech nature of the
manufacturing process makes
the company’s production
environment very complex, so
the checkweigher design was
adapted to this environment.
Due to the small amount of
space available, Lamb Weston
needed a checkweighing
solution that had a small
footprint and, at the same
time, was adapted to the
height dimensions of
upstream and downstream
machines. For instance,
the entire checkweighing
system has been designed
to a special height to match
the height of the customer’s
production line system.
And to further accommodate
space requirements, the
conveyor control system has
been positioned externally
with a separate control cabinet
including the weighing
terminal.
The Mettler Toledo
FreeWeigh.Net software
package also allows the
checkweighers to be used
in the integrated production
network for recording
statistical quality data.
The company’s entire
production process can thus
be traced and recorded on item
level as well as on batch level,
and the system facilitates an
accurate overview of current
production data.
In this way, Lamb Weston
covers the entire scope of
finished packaging and filling
process checking and can
react faster to any changes in
the production process.
T 0116 235 7070
W www.mt.com
Product changeovers are speedy
Pumps help
hot sauce
accuracy
Germany-based Paradies Eis
is leveraging the benefits of
peristaltic pump technology
from Watson-Marlow Fluid
Technology Group (WMFTG) to
dose hot chocolate sauce into ice
cream. The company is using the
latest 530 peristaltic pumps and
tubing for the reliability that this
delicate task requires.
Further benefits delivered to
Paradies Eis include low pump
maintenance requirements,
excellent processing capabilities,
high levels of accuracy and easy
operation.
Chocolate has to be dosed at
a temperature of about 60deg C
into the ice cream, where the
liquid mass then hardens again.
At Paradies Eis, peristaltic pumps
are used for this task as without
valves, seals or moving parts in
the fluid path, peristaltic pumps
are ideal for operation in hygienic
environments, says WMFTG.
In use, the pumped media only
comes into contact with a food
quality tube. Moreover, media
is pumped very gently and with
extremely low shear forces,
so product quality is never
compromised. Peristaltic
pumps also offer high precision
and reproducibility, which
help maximise product
consistency, an important
consideration in ice cream
manufacture.
The Watson-Marlow 500
series runs quietly and evenly
and performs reliably with a high
degree of accuracy, according to
brand owner Axel Steen.
T 01326 370362
W www.wmftg.co.uk