Not a Cookie Cutter Conveyor:
LEWCO Designs A Conveyor To Solve Unique Bakery Industry Problem
The United States’ leading baker of biscotti cookies recently approached LEWCO,
Inc. with a unique manufacturing problem. It seems the most popular style of
this Italian dunking cookie is bottom coated with a layer of chocolate—and the
chocolate was being scraped off the cookies as they transitioned from one
conveyor line to another.
The bakery executives met with LEWCO, Inc. design and application engineers to
come up with a concept to design, build and test. If successful, the prototype
conveyor would be incorporated throughout their North American facilities. After
much trial and error, it was determined that rotating the long, narrow cookies
as little as 15 degrees after leaving the baking ovens allowed the chocolate
coating to be applied—and to stick!
While rotating the cookies solved the coating problem, the application became
more complex as the company needed to run various sized and types of cookies
through the same chocolate coating line. LEWCO, Inc. designed and built a
conveyor that runs 10 separate food-grade belts on one unit, each belt capable
of running at a variable speed. Because biscotti cookies are long and narrow,
they span two belts, with five cookie lines running down the length of the
conveyor.
As they advance down the
conveyor, the cookies slowly revolve until they achieve the needed degree of
rotation that allows the chocolate coating to stick.
 This ten-strand, ten-drive conveyor is powered by ten separate variable
frequency drives (VFDs), which are controlled through an Operator Interface
Terminal (OIT) via Modbus communications, facilitating creation, storage,
modification and execution of up to fifty distinct “recipes” in addition to
being capable of manual control and on-the-fly changes. The programming
and communication features of the OIT and VFDs eliminate the need for a PLC and
presents clear visual and textual interface using multi-level access screens
which allow monitoring and control access commensurate with selected levels of
security and responsibility. Safety, simplicity, ease of use and cost
efficiency defines the controls system implemented on this machine.
LEWCO, Inc. welcomes design and custom conveyor challenges. With a full staff of
experienced conveyor design and application engineers, we can solve the toughest
manufacturing problems—“from concept to commissioning”.
View video of conveyor in action:
Not a Cookie
Cutter Conveyor.wmv
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