commissary INSIDER - June 2017 - 6

Food Safety:

Inline detection
systems
by Ryan Atkinson

s producers strive to keep up
with regulation surrounding the
Food Safety Modernization Act,
inline metal detection, X-ray inspection
and vision systems become even more
important.

A quick look through the Food and Drug
Administration recalls will show a number of products found to have potential
safety problems, from possible foreign
matter in whole wheat flour, to small
metal shavings in apple coffee cakes,
to small metal fragments in a brand's
gourmet cookies and plastic pieces in a
bakery's muffins and brownies.
"FSMA has created an increased level
of focus in all areas pertaining to the
safety of the products we consume and
the individual ingredients that are combined to manufacture them," Robert
Rogers, food safety expert at Mettler
Toledo, told Baking & Snack.

Automatic safety and inspection tools
that complement or replace manual inspection can help food manufacturers
ensure product safety from one end of
the plant to the other. Inline safety and
inspection systems can detect and prevent problems earlier in the production
chain, kicking out rejects, lessening the
chance of damage to equipment and ultimately saving time otherwise spent on
backtracking.

Advances in technology

use simultaneous multi-frequency operation in order to improve the systems' sensitivity. It does this by procession multiple frequencies over a broad spectrum.
Product effect can cause false rejections
because conductive elements like moisture, salt or iron alter the electromagnetic field of a metal detector, simulating
the presence of metal when none exists,
according to Heat and Control. The food
processing, packaging and weighing
equipment manufacturer combats this
with its CEIA THS/MS21 technology,
which differentiates between metal and
product effect.
TNA North America, meanwhile, uses
new technology for its Hyper-Detect 5
system to solve weaknesses caused by
the physical shape of the metal detector's inspection gateway. These systems
are typically installed on snack packaging lines between the net-weighing scale
and the bagger.

Inline systems aren't new to the industry, but they have seen rapid advances
in controls and technology over the last
handful of years. Today's systems can
"learn" products on their own and eliminate noise and product effect, and some
complete do away with manual training.

"We changed the geometry of how product passes form scale through the metal
detector and into the bag," says Mark Lozano, sales manager for TNA. "The coils'
ability to detect metals is weakest in the
center of the detection zone. With the new
design, the product does not flow through
the center. Therefore, you get higher detection levels and better accuracy."

For example, Fortress Technology developed its Interceptor metal detector to

X-ray vision
While some food products and baked
goods are packaged in plastic films or
paperboard cartons that provide no
interference to metal detectors, those
packaged in foil pans or metalized
films present a different problem, one
requiring X-rays.
While slow inspection speeds in the
past tended to work against use of Xray technology, modern systems solve
such limitations.

PHOTO: HEAT AND CONTROL
HEAT AND CONTROL COMBATS FALSE REJECTIONS WITH ITS CEIA THS/MS21 TECHNOLOGY.

6 * JUNE 2017

commissary INSIDER

Meketic USA's Midmeki mid-range unit
operates efficiently at conveyor speeds
nearing 6.5 feet per second, according
to the company. The compact units have
on-screen displays that pinpoint the exact location of the contaminants in the
product. This helps operators take corrective action more quickly. All reject

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of commissary INSIDER - June 2017