Baking & Snack - September 2009 - 90

TORTILLA PROCESSING

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To better serve a growing food service market, tortilla manufacturers
want faster lines that create a more consistent product.
BY SHANE WHITAKER
ortillas are no longer just relegated to Mexican
food. A few years ago McDonald's restaurants
introduced a snack wrap, which proved to be
a popular new menu item. Other quick-service
restaurants (QSR) have followed suit, and today, virtually every one offers some sandwich-type product made
using a flour tortilla or flatbread.
Food service customers generally have tighter specifications for their products than tortilla manufacturers
may have traditionally experienced when producing for
retail. When a QSR wants an 8-in. wrap, its tolerances
are likely to be less than what a tortilla processor may be
used to producing for its retail products. And because of
this, tortilla manufacturers desire equipment that can assist them in producing more consistent products.

QUICK SHIM. Consistency, greater throughputs and
labor savings are the three qualities that tortilla manufacturers are most often requesting from new tortilla systems, according to Kyle Armstrong, sales manager, J.C.
Ford Co., La Habra, CA.
Glenn Shelton, vice-president, sales, Lawrence Equipment, South El Monte, CA, agreed with this assessment,
noting that equipment manufacturers have "to enable the
producer to achieve a tighter spec control at higher speeds
with less labor."
To help processors achieve these goals, Lawrence intro-

BAKING & SNACK / September 2009

duced a new vacuum-head press that can be shimmed in
small increments very quickly, according to Mr. Shelton.
The 1-Touch Quick Shim upgrade is available for both
its Legend 42 and Mega 52 systems, and it provides the
producer with Teflon-coated pressing skins that retain the
ideal shim pattern/program array that a producer makes.
The major advantage of this new system is that processors
can feather in the exact amount of shimming they need
to make more consistent product because of the very thin
special alloy aluminum sheets used, he explained.
Because a press continually heats and cools, the press
head distorts over time, and those presses with larger
plates will have greater distortion that creates dimensional variations to products. If a processor has the
ability to mitigate that by putting in shims and leveling
out plates from time to time, then it can produce more
consistent product. Lawrence's new patent-pending solution allows them to do this in a matter of minutes.
The uniquely fabricated main upper press platen used
in the 1-Touch Quick Shim features vacuum assist against
which the skin is secure, and the Teflon-coated skins are
pre-indicated for precise location of shim by diameter and
program array. A variety of circular shims of varying thickness and diameter are available for precision adjustment and
enhanced heat transfer, and changeover time between skins
is two minutes. In addition, simple onscreen commands
assist operators in making changeovers to the skins, and a

Baking & Snack - September 2009

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