Baking&Snack - July 2013 - 72

DEPOSITORS

Depositors can now handle a range of
viscosities, particularly delicate batters,
without damaging the final product.
Unifiller

Depositing free from gluten
Gluten-free products can cause not only formulating challenges but processing challenges as well. The lack of structure can make these doughs difficult to stay together when
being handled by human hands much less an automated
production line. Depositing is not exempt from these issues.
“Gluten-free doughs are usually the consistency of toothpaste, said John McIsaac, vice-president, strategic business
”
development, Reiser, Canton, MA. “This makes them hard
to cut.
”
Gluten-free products have a hard time separating from
the depositing head. To combat this, Reiser uses tighttolerance rotary valves and unique piston valves to get this
separation. “Many of our depositors use a small barrier of
air to create separation without sacrificing speed or exact
weight control, Mr. McIsaac said.
”

/ Baking & Snack / July 2013

to ensure they don’t slow production lines down. The
servo-driven pump technology on Hinds-Bock’s Servo
Pump Fillers drives throughput and provides greater
precision. These improvements echo down the line
with increased uptime, greater yield and reduced downstream labor.
While flowable product can easily be portioned by
piston depositors, thick batters may not always move
through the equipment so easily. Products such as
brownie batters or cookie doughs need more assistance
than basic gravity to ensure smooth flow and accurate
weight portions.
“A piston filler depends on gravity and the natural
vacuum created when the piston pulls back,” said John
McIsaac, vice-president, strategic business development,
Reiser, Canton, MA. “This is not always enough to fill
the cylinder. If the cylinder is not completely filled, there
is no weight accuracy.”
To combat this issue, Reiser’s Vemag uses a vacuum
to draw the product into a double-screw portioning
system. This not only ensures accurate weights in every
deposit but also continuously loads the system, creating
a smoother flow with thicker products.
“We use a continuous process and a vacuum pump to
create the vacuum in the screw to pull the product in,”
Mr. McIsaac said. “We also have an infeed scroll that we
turn to guide the product from hopper to double screw.
Once we fill the double screw, we can accurately portion
every time.”
Traditional gearwheel depositors are unable to handle
stiff and heavy batter, and to address this gap in flexibility,
Unifiller, Delta, BC, developed the Multistation, a multidepositor that handles a range of viscosities from batters
with chunky fillings and particulates to liquids such as
eggs and custards. According to the company, this depositor will handle delicate products — even chunky,
soft delicate products — gently without altering the integrity of the product. With each nozzle volumetrically
controlled by pistons, the depositor ensures accurate
deposit weights with added flexibility.
For products that need dough extruders, Unifiller offers its Cookie Dough Dopositor. The machine can handle bars, scones, pie dough, cookie pucks, sugar cookies,
gluten-free products, brownies and frozen cookies.

Preserving inclusions
Baked foods that start out as batter — such as muffins—
lend themselves to carrying inclusions. “Bakers like to
differentiate their products with inclusions like nuts,
chocolate chips or gummies,” Mr. McIsaac said. “For
maximum effect, they want the pieces as large as possible.” Inclusions large and small bring another level of
challenges to the depositing line, the main challenge
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Baking&Snack - July 2013

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