Biscuit Sandwiching Machines

1. Biscuit sandwiches

Biscuits may be automatically sandwiched with cream or jam or two ingredients. The biscuits are normally fed manually from the packing table to a set of vibratory conveyors. The vibratory conveyors ensure a “pressureless” feed to the sandwiching machine. This avoids breakage of the biscuit shells.

2. Biscuit magazine feeds

FIG 1  Biscuit feed chutes on a Baker Perkins high speed sandwiching machine

The biscuit shells are stripped one by one from the feed chutes by pegs on a chain conveyor. This carries the bottom biscuit shell under a stencil which deposits the cream. Subsequently the top biscuit shell is placed to form the sandwich.

3. Cream feed systems

The cream is applied by rotary stencils with a wire cut off. Each stencil is fed by a cream pump from the cream reservoir tank. There is one cream pump for each lane of the sandwiching machine, each with its own variable speed drive and independently adjustable for accurate weight control of the cream deposit. Cream feed speed is set to follow the sandwiching machine.

FIG 2   Baker Perkins cream feed system with two pumps

4. Cream stencils

FIG 3  Baker Perkins cream stencils on a four lane machine

FIG 4  Biscuit sandwiching system

FIG 5  Co – depositing, jam and cream                                                            

5. Biscuit cream sandwich machines

The machines may have multi-lanes, usually from 2 up to 6 lanes. Each lane may produce 200 – 800 sandwiches per minute, depending on the product and machine characteristics.

The sandwiching machine will generally be followed by a lane multiplier to increase the number of lanes of sandwiches to feed a cooling tunnel. The cooling will set the cream for the sandwiches to be delivered to packaging.

FIG 6  Four lane sandwiching machine with lane multiplier from EverSmart Food Equipment, China

FIG 7 EverSmart 2 colour sandwiching machine. High speed sandwiching system for a variety of biscuit shapes and sizes

6. Cookie Capper machines

Cookie cappers are full width sandwiching systems. The original cookie capper was known as the Mims Capper and is now supplied by Machine Builders & Design.

The cappers take the biscuit shells directly from the end of the cooling conveyor. The machines align the rows of biscuits, flip over the alternate rows, align and deposit the fillings on to alternate rows with bottom side up and then pick and place the top biscuits to form the sandwich.

The systems are versatile and available with different depositing systems to handle cream, jam or mallow. Cappers may have several depositors to enable a variety of fillings to be applied. The cookie cappers may be arranged to feed the sandwiches directly to a chocolate enrobing line.

FIG 8 Korean pies with mallow and cream fillings

FIG 9 Cookie capper from Procys <www.procys.eu>             

FIG 10  Procys Cookie Capper

FIG 11 Procys  Cookie Capper: biscuit alignment 

FIG 12 Procys Cookie Capper with no product / no cream facility

FIG 13  Sollich sandwiching plant Sollocofill® / Sollcocap®

A recently developed sandwiching system for either single or double deposits with a maximum throughput of up to 240 biscuit rows/minute (120 sandwiches per minute).

7.  Sandwich cooling

FIG 14  Cooling tunnel from AMC System Technology (Suzhou) Co Ltd. / www.coolingtunnelsystem.com

Sandwiches are cooled in refrigerated tunnel coolers to set the cream before packaging.

>Sandwich Biscuits: From Cream Application to Cooling of Creamed Sandwiches

Discussion

Fat for cream filling in sandwiching secondary process

Sandwiching machines

Maximum % of lecithin amount in sandwich cream filling

8. Reading

• Aasted ApS.  www.aasted.eu  2017
• AMC System Technology (Suzhou) Co. Ltd.  www.coolingtunnelsystem.com 2017
• Baker Perkins Ltd. www.bakerperkins.com 2017
• Beijing Yinrich Technology Developing Co. Ltd. https://yinrich.en.alibaba.com 2017
• Eurosicma Spa.  www.eurosicma.it  2017
• Eversmart Food Equipment   www.eversmartpack.com 2017
• Food Processing Equipment s.r.l.   www.fpe2000.it   2017
• GEA Group. www.gea.com/en/productgroups/food-processing-systems/bakery-equipment/index.jsp 2017
• K&Kurt Makina. www.kurtmakina.com  
• Peerless Food Equipment.  www.peerlessfood.com  2017
• Procys  www.procys.eu  2017
• Production Techniques Ltd. www.ptl.co.nz  2017
• Richeng Foodstuff Machinery Co. Ltd.   www.ri-cheng.com.cn 2017
• Riley Product Handling Ltd.  https://www.rileyproducthandling.com    2017
• Sollich KG. www.sollich.com   2017

Leading image:  Sandwich biscuits