New features reduce waste for high-speed biscuit sandwiching

The machine can produce up to 4,800 cream-filled biscuits per minute, and the new features address some of the most common problems associated with high-speed sandwiching machinery, including reliable positioning of cream fillings and accurate placing of the second biscuit on top.

Baker Perkins marketing manager Keith Graham told BakeryandSnacks.com: “With the high speed, if you get a biscuit that’s broken or out of position you can get an awful lot of mess very quickly. We found with the standard machine that stoppages were becoming more frequent than we or our customers would like. The system of pushing the products through the machines needed to be more robust.”​

Problems arise when the pusher pins, which are attached to separate chains, become misaligned, meaning that biscuits are not centrally positioned and the cream filling is more difficult to apply accurately. The new machinery connects the chains, which can stretch over time, with a solid plastic block.

The company said: “The new feature makes pin misalignment virtually impossible.”​

It is this added stability which acts to reduce downtime.

Ensuring that biscuits stay flat as they pass through the machine can also be problematic. Baker Perkins has added stabilising features, including a solid platform to support the magazine which holds the top biscuits.

The high-speed cream sandwiching machines are available in two, three, four, five and six-lane versions, with each lane capable of carrying up to 800 biscuits per minute, depending on the product’s strength.

“With a very delicate product you would have to back off from the higher speeds,” ​said Graham.

He added that the high speed machines are especially well-suited to “high output dedicated lines”​ running automatically straight from the oven to the wrapping machines. However, mixed lines are also possible, he said, by feeding the cooled biscuits through the system manually.