New Processing Equipment: March 2023
Quality control (QC) and quality assurance (QA) is vital in the snack and bakery world. Checkweighers, scales, metal detectors, X-ray systems, and vision systems all help products land in consumers’ hands-free of defects.
Antares Vision Group
Company: Antares Vision Group
Website: antaresvision.com
Equipment Snapshot: Antares Vision Group’s All-in-One equipment portfolio for food & beverage applications incorporates multiple inspection controls into single machines, maximizing production space and manpower efficiencies while offering exemplary quality assurance. The combo units draw upon technology from AVG technology solutions provider FT System, as well as inspection controls specialist Pen-Tec.
Bunting
Company: Bunting
Website: buntingmagnetics.com
Equipment Snapshot: Bunting offers its Metal Detector and Checkweigher combination unit, which allow both inspections to take place on one combined unit which saves customers overall floor space. It also combines the logging of both inspections for metal and weight into one easily accessible log file.
Fortress Technology
Company: Fortress Technology
Website: fortresstechnology.com
Equipment Snapshot: Halo Automatic Testing, unique to Fortress, swiftly overcomes testing production bottlenecks by automatically performing real-time performance verifications with virtual test samples, helping to eliminate operator errors and health and safety risks. Production doesn’t stop while each Halo test is in progress. The line will only halt if the metal detector or reject checks fail. Results from the performance verifications are automatically logged and digitally saved for a GFSI audit.
Heat and Control
Company: Heat and Control
Website: heatandcontrol.com
Equipment Snapshot: As the technology in inspection and detection equipment continues to advance, bakery and snack producers should evaluate the level of their quality control program and, if necessary, utilize more sophisticated inspection equipment that detects smaller foreign objects, reduces false rejects, and handles a wider range of products to assure maximum food safety with higher productivity, says Heat and Control.
Key Technology
Company: Key Technology
Website: key.net
Equipment Snapshot: Key Technology’s VERYX optical sorters, installed on snack and bakery production lines to remove FM and defects, are uniquely qualified to contribute to the data revolution. By default, these sorters “see” 100 percent of the product on the line, recognizing color, size, shape, structural property, and/or chemical composition. Equipped with the company’s Discovery software, VERYX can continuously collect, analyze, and share data every object flowing through the sorter to reveal patterns and trends that can help control upstream and downstream processes.
Loma Systems
Company: Loma Systems
Website: loma.com/en
Equipment Snapshot: Conventional X-rays offer single flat images, Loma Systems’ X5 SideShoot, as the name suggests, inspects from the side, making it suitable for products that are taller than they are wide—up to 265mm in height. Being able to identify specific layers helps identify precisely where the missing content/contaminant occurred within the production, so manufacturers would only need to check and clean the fill source for that layer, thus reducing downtime and wastage.
Spee-Dee Packaging
Company: Spee-Dee Packaging
Website: spee-dee.com
Equipment Snapshot: Tool-less change parts, easy access hoppers, and complete product contact swap-out parts are a few ways that equipment manufacturers have addressed making machines easier to clean and faster to change over, says Mark Navin, vice president of sales, Spee-Dee Packaging, Sturtevant, WI
Yamato
Company: Yamato
Website: yamatoamericas.com
Equipment Snapshot: When upstream equipment has consistent errors, QA/QC equipment should also have the ability to communicate with it—stopping it completely to prevent the error from happening consistently. Yamato’s I-Series Checkweigher can communicate with upstream equipment to improve accuracy and inform on audits with historical data. With the I-Series’ Operation History Data Retrieval function, all products are recorded by sending a signal similar to a Bluetooth connection, or through a wire connection, between the packaging equipment being used.