GB2214049A - Apparatus for and method of forming a plurality of products - Google Patents

Abstract

Pastry products are formed in containers 44 having four or more recesses 46 arranged in two rows. The containers are indexed successively into two locations C1 and D1 where product forming operations are performed on pastry deposited in the recesses. Alternate ones of the recesses in each row are operated on at one location and the remaining ones in that row at the other location. This make the spacing of the recess substantially independent of the tool size and enables containers of products to be formed in one continuous operation thus simplifying the production process. Filling and lids may be deposited in and on the formed pastry as desired. <IMAGE>

Description

APPARATUS FOR AND METHOD OF FORMING A PLURALITY OF PRODUCTS The present invention relates to apparatus for and a method of forming a plurality of products, particularly, but not exclusively food products such as pies and tarts.

In the continuous production of such food products individual containers are supplied with pastry which is then formed into bases with forming tools. Filling is supplied, and, if desired, a lid. The formed products are baked in an oven, cooled and packaged. The packaging of the products involves several separate and discreet operations. Individual products are manually or mechanically placed in trays, the trays cut to size, transferred to a packaging conveyor and placed in a packet.

Not only is this a costly and time consuming operation in itself, the machinery required to perform these tasks is also costly to buy, maintain and run and a considerable amount of space is required to accommodate it.

According to one aspect of the present invention, there is provided apparatus for forming a plurality of products comprising a support defining a plurality of support positions, means for indexing operative to index the support into a first location in which certain selected ones of the support positions are located to enable a product forming operation to be effected on material at those positions and into a second location in which certain other selected ones of the support positions are located to enable a product forming operation to be effected on material at those positions whereby to enable the distance between adjacent support positions to be reduced.

According to another aspect of the present invention, there is provided a method of forming a plurality of products comprising the steps of indexing a support having a plurality of support positions into a first location, effecting a product forming operation on material at certain selected position, indexing the support into a second location, and effecting a product forming operation on material at certain other selected ones of the support positions whereby to enable the distance between adjacent support positions to be reduced.

In a preferred embodiment of the invention, the support positions are arranged in a row. Alternate positions are operated upon in the first location and the remaining positions are operated upon in the second location. There may be more than one row, the support positions in each other row being alternately operated on as already described. With two rows, for example, pluralities of products in a two by two, two by four and so on formation may be produced. The support positions in the support are provided by holes disposed in a tray.

Containers formed with recesses for the product material are located in the holes. As alternate support positions are operated upon at any one time the tool carrying out the operation on one support position may overlap the adjacent support positions. Thus, the support positions are effectively independent of the size of the tool and this does not therefore dictate how close adjacent positions may be.

Material, usually pastry is deposited in appropriate recesses prior to product forming. One product forming tool supports the recess from below whilst another formed the pastry in the recess from the top. By making the container of a heat resistant material, the container and formed products may be introduced together to the oven so that after baking they are immediately ready for packaging with further arrangement.

In order that the invention may be more clearly understood, one embodiment thereof will now be described, by way of example, with reference to the accomapnying drawings, in which: Figure 1 is a diagrammatic plan view of an existing production line for the manufacture of pies/tarts, Figure 2 i a diagrammatic plan view showing off a modification to the production line of the type shown in Figure 1, Figure 3 is a diagrammatic plan view of an existing pie/tart forming system showing progressive stages in the formation of the product, Figure 4 is a section along the line A-A of Figure 1, Figure 5 is a diagrammatic plan view of a forming system according to the invention, and Figure 6 is a section along the line B-B of Figure 5.

Ref fearing to Figure 1 of the drawings, the main steps in the continuous production of pies or tart are the making of the pies or tarts in a corresponding machine 1, the baking of the pies or tarts in an oven 2 and the cooling of the baked products in a cooler 3. A continuous conveyor 4 extends through oven 2 and cooler 3 and a transfer arrangement 5 is provided to transfer pies to the conveyor 4 from the machine 1. The cooled baked products are then transferred by a transfer arrangement 6 to packaging apparatus, one form of which is shown in Figure 2.This comprises a conveyor 7 designed to place trays under baked products arriving from the transfer arrangement 6, a device 8 for placing products in the trays, a machine 9 for cutting the trays into packet sizes, a device 10 for transferring the cut trays to the packaging machine and the packaging machine 11 itself.

The base diameter of a pie or tart may be small (typically 30mm) which causes difficulty in mechanical handling at transfer points. In the system shown in Figure 1 the products are lifted from the pie making machine and transferred to a baking/cooling system which has one continuous conveyor to eliminate any transfer of product from one conveyor to another. An alternative method would be to place the individual products onto a tray which would then be relatively easy to handle mechanically.

The majority of these individual products are sold in a retail packet with a multiple number contained (often four or six). Because of the difficulty in mechanically putting the individual products into a packet, they are often first placed into a thin tray having the required number of recesses. This is the system shown in Figue 2. However, the placing of the individual products into the thin tray, which as mentioned is done either manually or mechanically, is difficult and/or expensive. To give efficient manufacture these thin trays are usually made from several trays of the appropriate packet size. Hence these must be cut to the appropriate size to fit the size of the packet, so requiring further machinery 9. For economies of packinging, space and size, each thin tray has a matrix of holes positioned so that the individual products are almost touching each other.

Referring to Figures 3 and 4, the product making machine 1 comprises a conveyor which is usually constructed from thin metal trays 20 with appropriate sized holes 22 cut in them. These trays 20 progressively and successively adopt the following positions on their journey through the product making machine 1 at which the following process steps are taken.

POSITION A.

Individual containers 24, usually of aluminium, are placed into each of the holes 22 in the tray 20, in this position. The machine then indexes distance P1 at a constant pitch until the row of containers reach position 2. This pitch P1 must be great enough to allow space for the vertical flanges 26 of the trays 20 as well as the product size.

POSITION B.

A quantity of pastry 23 of the appropriate weight is placed into each container 24. The machine then indexes by a constant pitch (P1) until the row of containers 24 and pastry reach postion C.

POSITION C.

(a) A base support tool 30 rises to give each container 24 extra support. An outer sleeve 32 of the top tool descends which will prevent pastry from escaping from the container when it is formed into shape.

(b) The central die" 34 of the top tool descends to force the piece of pastry connected to the end of a spring loaded shaft 36 into the appropriate shape.

Because of the physical dimensions of the top tool it can be seen that the minimum pitch P2 between lateral rows of containers 24 is slightly greater than the outside diameter of the outer sleeve 32.

The machine then indexes by a constant pitch (P1) until the containers and formed pastry reach position D.

POSITION D.

An appropriate quantity of filling 38 is placed into each container 24. The machine now indexes through a constant pitch (P1) until the containers and formed pastry and filling reach position E.

POSITION E.

If desired, a lid 39 is placed upon the pie to complete the product, which then pass to the baking oven as already described.

Referring now to Figues 5 and 6, a product forming machine according to the invention is diagrammaticaly shown. In contrast to the machine of Figures 3 and 4, this comprises thin trays 40 which have two rows of holes 42.

In this particular case the hole format is 4 x 2. In other respects, the trays 40 are similar to the trays 20 of Figures 3 and 4. Instead of individual containers 24 for the products, two containers 44 each having four product recesses 46 are provided. The eight recesses 46 locate in the eight holes 42.

The trays 40 progressively and successively adopt the following positions on their journey through the product making machine. The trays 40 are indexed alterately first through a distance PA and then through a distance PB for a purpose which will become apparent later.

The machine indexes from positon Al to position A2 through distance PA and at this point two containers 44 each having four recesses 46 in a 2 x 2 configuration are placed onto the conveyor tray.

The machine then indexes through distance PB at which point a row of pieces of pastry are placed into each of the recesses 46 at position B1.

The machine then indexes through distance PA at which point another two containers 44 with recesses 46 in a 2 x 2 format can be placed onto a conveyor tray 40 at position A1-A2 and another row of pieces 53 of pastry are placed in recesses 46 at position B1.

The machine then indexes through distance PB to position C. At this point alternative recesses 46 across the conveyor tray 40 have a base support tool 50 rising and a top forming tool 52 descends, (with outer sleeve to ensure "scrapless" forming of the pastry), so forming pastry into the desiged shape 47 in alternate recesses 46.

The machine then indexes through distance PA when two more containers in 2 x 2 format are placed at position A1-A2 another row of pieces 53 of pastry are placed into recesses 46 at position B1 and the same alternate rows at position C1 are formed into the desired shape of the pie.

The machine then indexes through distance PB when another row of pieces 53 of pastry are placed into recesses 46 at position B1, the same alternate rows are formed into shape at position C1 and those alternate rows which have not been formed at position C1 are now formed at position D1 into desired shape 48.

In this manner it can now be seen that by means of a "dual index" of conveyor and by separating the forming tools into two rows, separated by more than one pitch'and forming the paste in alternative recesses into shape 47, 48 a matrix can be made at the pie forming machine similar to the final matrix needed for the final retail packet - which therefore overcomes the physical constraints of conveyor tray size and "scrapless" forming tool size.

The machine then indexes on a PA-PB system to deposit filling into the formed bases 47 and 48 and have lid 49 fitted if desired, at positions E and F respectively. The unbaked products are then fed to the baking oven in the usual way and thence to the product cooler. The containers 40 are of metal foil, synthetic plastics material or other material suitable for passing through the oven. However, rather than the individual product handling necessary in the typical process of manufacture of pies and tarts, the four product units are of sufficient size for each mechanical handling and conform to the final matrix of the retail packet. Hence, the flexibility of the system of manufacture is maximised, no machinery or labour is required to put individual containers into a tray for the purpose of packing and in fact that tray for packaging is no longer required.

The system also eliminates the machine for cutting the large packaging tray into packet size units.

It will be appreciated that the above embodiment has been described by way of example only and that many variations are possible without departing from the invention.

Claims (18)

1. Apparatus for forming a plurality of products comprising a support defining a plurality of support positions, means for indexing operative to index the support into a first location in which certain selected ones of the support positions are located te enable product forming operation to be effected on material at those positions and into a second location in which certain other selected ones of the support positions are located to enable a product forming operation to be effected on material at those positions whereby to enable the distance between adjacent support positions to be reduced.

2. Apparatus as claimed in claim 1, in which the support positions are arranged in at least one row.

3. Apparatus as claimed in claim 2, in which alternate positions in the or each row are disposed to be operated upon in the first location and the remaining positions are disposed to be operated upon in the second location.

4. Apparatus as claimed in claim 3, in which there are four support positions arranged in two rows of two.

5. Apparatus as claimed in claim 3, in which there are eight support positions arranged in two rows of four.

6. Apparatus as claimed in any preceding claim, in which the support positions in the support are provided by holes disposed in a tray.

7. Apparatus as claimed in claim 6, in which containers formed with recesses for the product material to be formed are located in the holes.

8. Apparatus as claimed in claim 7, in which the containers are formed of a heat resistant material.

9. Apparatus as claimed in any preceding claim In which upper and lower product forming tools are disposed at each location.

10. Apparatus for forming a plurality of products substantially as hereinbefore described with reference to Figures 5 and 6 of the accompanying drawings.

11. A method of forming a plurality of products comprising the steps of indexing a support having a plurality of support positions into a first location, effecting a product forming operation on material at certain selected position, indexing the support into a second location, and effecting a product forming operation on material at certain other selected ones of the support positions whereby to enable the distance between adjacent support positions to be reduced.

12. A method as claimed in claim 11 in which a container having a number of recesses corresponding to the support positions in place on the support prior to the product forming operations.

13. A method as claimed in claim 12, in which material to be formed is deposited in the recesses at the selected positions prior to each product forming operation and upper and lower product forming tools are brought into product forming disposition at each location to form the deposited material as desired.

14. A method as claimed in claim 11, 12 or 13, in which the support positions are arranged in at least one row.

15. A method as claimed in claim 14, in which every other one in the or each row is operated upon at the first location and the remaining ones at the second location.

16. A method as claimed in any preceding claim, in which filling is deposited in the material formed at the support positions.

17. A method as claimed in claim 16, in which a lid is placed on top of each filling.

18. A method for forming a plurality of products substantially as hereinbefore described with reference to Figure 10 of the accompanying drawings.