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Insight Insider Technology: Metal Detection By John Unrein I n the food industry, certain products can act like metal contaminants, a phenomenon known as product effect. This is where the type of product being inspected can hinder the ability of inspection technology to correctly identify metal. At best this can lead to unacceptable false reject levels, at worst it can result in metal contaminated product leaving the production facility. Preventing harm to consumers and brand reputation does not need to come at the cost of production efficiency. Mettler-Toledo Safeline has published a new white paper, Understanding Challenging Applications for Improved Metal Detection to help operators better overcome product effect. Some factors that can influence the absence or presence of product effect are salt content, moisture content, temperature, product size and shape, product position and 14 * NOVEMBER / DECEMBER 2015 * orientation through detector, product consistency and density, packaging material (especially metallized film), and whether product is wet or dry. "Conquering the product effect phenomenon has been a key issue for our industry for some time," explains Jonathan Richards, head of marketing at Mettler-Toledo Safeline Metal Detection. "Our Profile Advantage system represents a major technological breakthrough in metal detection capability. By overcoming product effect, it helps manufacturers increase brand protection, reduce costs and improve productivity. Consequently, the new system supports food companies by ensuring only contaminant-free product leaves their manufacturing facility. Combining this reliable performance with an overall low total cost of ownership evaluation enables metal detection to become the preferred technology choice." commissary INSIDER To deal with product effect, metal detectors operate at many frequencies, from 25 kHz to 900 kHz. Adjusting these frequencies means a trade-off between higher sensitivity, which leads to more false rejects, and lower sensitivity, which can result in metal contaminants passing undetected. The most common additional technique for tiny metal contaminant detection is phase discrimination, which reduces product signal and amplifies metal signal, improving sensitivity performance. Sophisticated metal detectors have a dedicated Digital Signal Processor (DSP) to handle phase discrimination that results in the detection of even smaller metal contaminants. Multi-Simultaneous-Frequency detectors are the most sensitive, tackling product effect by operating at high and low frequencies simultaneously. The most sophisticated detectors use Product Signal Suppression (PSS) technology, with two stages of discrimination: frequency and phase. This cancels information from high and low frequency combinations, removing product signal to allow detection of much smaller metal contaminants. PSS can also handle variations, adjusting to different levels of product effect in each product.

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of instore - Nov + Dec 2015

instore - Nov + Dec 2015
Editor's Note - Channel Blurring
What's Ahead
Table of Contents
News - On Our Radar
Shopper Demographics - Cookies
Deli Prepared Foods
Smaller Households
Commissary Insider - Insight Insider
Preserving Color in Ready-To-Eat Meats
Big Gains for Ancient Grains
Proactive Defense
Deli & Cheese Slicers
Metal Detection
Deli Trends - Clean Eating
Adapting to Change - Foodservice Trends
Growing Movement - Free-form category explodes
Specialty in the Bakery - Artisan bread displays
Be Competitive - Lunchtime
Product Spotlight - Cookies, candies & sweets
Specialty Cheese - Pizza cheeses
Product Trends - First to Market
Product Showcase
Next Up/Ad Index

instore - Nov + Dec 2015