The COMJET with the WP Robot promises professional lye application combined with a robotic cutting plant.
Under the WP Robot brand, WP Riehle presents the first robotic module connected to the COMJET automatic lye application unit. It says the automation increases efficiency when manufacturing lye products, and ensures highly precise cuts in the dough pieces. The new, modular robotic module is used directly after lye application. Lye-dipped dough pieces move automatically into the robot cell, which is equipped with camera technology that uses a laser-3D triangulation method with up to 78 cameras to visually record the dough pieces. Robots then make precise cuts exactly as specified.
Various cutting techniques
The cutting plant is offered with various different cutting techniques. There is a choice between ultrasound, water jet, a rotating knife and fixed blades. The ultrasound knives are available in titanium alloys with various cut widths. The mechanical knives are available with regular cutting blades, rotating circular knives or serrated blades. The water cutting technique generates a fine jet of water that can cut into and through the individual products.
The robotic cutter complies with the high clean design requirements of the meat industry, including fully-encapsulated motors. The entire module can be cleaned quickly and easily with a high-pressure jet cleaner. The company also says the motors and mechanical parts of the cutter robot are very robust. Consequently, it can run for more than 100,000,000 cycles without maintenance.
Automatic lye applicator
The COMJET automatic lye applicator is also characterized by minimum personnel effort with maximum production volume. Due to the fully automatic lye application process, only a single employee is needed to operate the plant to apply lye to up to 300 trays/hour. Feeding can be by a proofed dough roll-off device – and now, as an innovation, with peelboards. The loading trolley is automatically docked onto the loading system, and all subsequent process steps run fully automatically. Dough pieces are accepted at the loading station and fed into the lye application machine, where the lye shower with two additional lye curtains ensures the most intensive lye application and thus high speed. In addition, the belt speed can be regulated to match individual products. After this process, the dough pieces are deposited directly onto a baking tray or transferred to a cutting plant. The COMJET has a 180-liter lye tank, with lye tank heating on request. The electronics offers an abundance of evaluation options via a touchscreen. Special customer-specific models can be fabricated to link directly to downstream processing machines – e.g. tunnel ovens or shock-freezers.
