Baking & Snack - November 2009 - 76

CAKE DECORATING

dients and the eye appeal," Mr. Macpherson said. "And we
have another computer-controlled cake decorating system
for shell borders and for automatically adding particulates to
the tops and sides of cakes."
Robotics plays an increasingly important role in decorating and building cakes. Unifiller employs robots to help
perform sophisticated cake decorating designs. Workers create designs such as faces, seasonal motifs and writing into a
computer, and the robot instantly demonstrates the design.
Automated cake decorating equipment delivers an appearance that cake manufacturers desire. Hinds-Bock Corp.,
Bothell, WA, offers machines with variable-speed controls
for the conveyor, icing pump flow and icing head oscillation
speed, which allow for an endless supply of different patterns
or thickness of glaze applied to the top and side of a cake,
according to Lance Aasness, the company's vice-president,
sales and marketing.
Its latest introductions include compact machines that
are very versatile and portable so they can be rolled away for
sanitation. "It is important that these machines have a lot of
flexibility in the different icing viscosities they can handle,"
he said. "And the equipment must be rugged and designed
for three shifts a day production if necessary and easy to
changeover and clean up."
MAKING IT CONSISTENT. Rademaker concentrated its
latest designs on improving the speed, accuracy and sanitation of its cake decorating systems. To improve the accuracy
of the depositing methods, it switched to gearwheel-style
pumps to handle a wide variety of fillings accurately as opposed to piston-style depositors that are less reliable.
Additionally, Mr. Riggle said automated cake decorating
equipment increased speeds vs. the previous benchmark of
20 cakes per minute. "Automatic lines in excess of 20 cakes
per minute can automatically apply rosettes and top and bottom shell borders to the cake," he said.
The single biggest benefit of an automated line is consistency. "With an automated cake decorating line, you still
have labor, although it's greatly reduced from a totally manual operation," Mr. Riggle said. "What the end user benefits

◀ A robotic decorating head puts the
finishing touches on
these cake rounds to
give them an upscale
appearance with
icing strings.
UNIFILLER SYSTEMS

BAKING & SNACK / November 2009

from is that they know how much icing is put in the middle
of the cake, how much icing is on top of the cake and on the
sides, and this enables the end user to know the true cost of
a cake."
Reducing labor costs is a major benefit of an automated
cake decorating line, Mr. Macpherson said. "It also minimizes the high training and recruiting costs normally associated
with a skilled staff," he observed.
However, Mr. Macpherson noted that bakers often purchase decorating lines because they want to standardize the
product's consistency. "Even in regions or countries where
labor is low cost and plentiful, product consistency is the
No. 1 driving factor, and our machines provide consistency
in way of portion control and finished cake consistency," he
said.
Bakeries want to put consistent quality products on the
shelves time after time, according to Matt Zielsdorf, vicepresident, sales and marketing, The Peerless Group, Sidney,
OH. Automated lines also reduce injuries to decorators such
as carpal tunnel syndrome and allow better control of icing
weights, thus reducing giveaway.
Bakeries are more focused on labor savings and efficiency
than in the past, according to Mr. Aasness. "Our servodriven icing depositor is able to achieve spreading of icing
on rectangular cakes equal to hand dressing, thereby eliminating the manual labor typically associated with this task,"
he said. "This labor reduction, in conjunction with accurate
metering of the icing, improves end users' margins."
Because bakeries are making multiple products per shift,
most processors are buying small, semiautomated lines that
are fairly inefficient but allow the processor to quickly and
inexpensively change products multiple times within the
shift, Mr. Riggle added.
Rademaker also manufactures clean-in-place lines to
make cleanup quicker and easier.
RETURN ON INVESTMENT. Bakers desire speed, flexibility and hand-decorated qualities because it helps shorten the
return on investment (ROI) that a bakery can expect from
purchasing an automated cake decorating line. Almost always, the ROI on automated decorating equipment is six to
12 months, whether it is modular system or a fully automated cake line, according to Mr. Macpherson. Cake decorating systems can be extremely complex because every bakery
has different issues, cakes, recipes and methods, and to that
end, Unifiller often customizes lines by combining different
standard components and tooling to meet each customer's
specific needs.
ROI is totally dependent on the processor, the skill level of
labor and the ancillary equipment, according to Mr. Riggle.
"Cake decorating is the hardest thing to automate in the baking industry because of the nature of the inconsistent cake
layer, the variables and inconsistency in the type of icings and
the skill level that is required of the operators," he said.
Ⅲ

Baking & Snack - November 2009

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