Automated handling of raw materials in the manufacture of baked goods
Apart from the automation of powdered bulk components stored in silos and liquids stored in tanks, the priority when designing this plant was to reduce manual actions involving minor and medium components.
Vacuum conveying scales have been arranged above the kneading lines and are fed with both the bulk and the preweighed minor and medium components.
Bulk quantities are stored in silos, which are fed directly from the bulk tanker using pressure conveying. Dosing screws are used for discharging from the storage silos and vibration bottoms or aeration units assist in this process.
The minor and medium components are sucked via a combined big bag and sack discharge station into circular feeding vessels positioned above the two AZO COMPONENTERS®. Six feeding vessels are allocated to each AZO COMPONENTER®. The raw materials are dosed onto small tilting scales using dosing screws combined with vibration bottoms or directly into the AZO COMPONENTER. The use of AZO COMPONENTER® scales affords extremely high weighing accuracy.
Great flexibility and high throughput rates are achieved by preparing partial batches with the two circular AZO COMPONENTERS® while simultaneously filling the vacuum conveying scales with the bulk components.
The partial batches are then transferred via a vacuum conveyor into the scales located above the kneading lines and discharged into the kneading machine together with the bulk components.
Micro quantities are weighed into small pouches and labelled at operator-controlled ManDos weighing stations. The micro quantities are identified and added to the kneading machine at a product feeding station in the immediate vicinity of the kneading machine.
AZO’s central process control and instrumentation system controls and monitors the entire mixing operation and ensures end-to-end documentation of the whole production process.
