Butchering – Sausage making – Stuffing
Reexamination Certificate
2000-04-20
2001-07-24
Little, Willis (Department: 3643)
Butchering
Sausage making
Stuffing
C452S027000, C452S038000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06264541
ABSTRACT:
The invention relates to an apparatus for stuffing casings or similar receptacles with paste, in particular with sausage meat or other foods in the form of paste, using a portioning means that stuffs adjustable portions of the paste through a stuffing horn or tube into a casing of a pre-defined caliber or caliber group, wherein said casing is pulled during stuffing and portion-wise from a casing holder. The term paste includes sausage fillings of any viscosity.
Apparatuses of this kind have been known for a considerable time. They are used in the meat products industry and in the butcher's trade to stuff sausage meat of the most varied recipes into casings. U.S. Pat. No. 3,553,768, for example, shows an apparatus for stuffing large diameter sausages and sizing said sausages to a particular diameter. This object is achieved by disposing an axially movable sleeve member at the end of the stuffing horn and the device for holding the sausage casing, whereby said device engages with said stuffing horn.
Through the wall of said sleeve member there is a radially disposed orifice through which compressed air can flow into said sleeve member. The sausage is guided through said sleeve member as it is formed. When the diameter is large enough to close the orifice, no air can flow into the sleeve member; the sausage has then reached the required diameter. If, however, the casing of the sausage being formed flows off the stuffing horn too quickly, and the diameter of the sausage becomes too small as a result, the sausage does not restrict the orifice for compressed air, thus allowing air to flow into the space between the sleeve member and the sausage. This flow of air is used to control an air motor in such a way that said motor pushes the sleeve member against the casing holder, thus increasing the braking power of the latter, This now causes less casing to flow off the stuffing horn, whereupon the diameter of the sausage in the sleeve member increases until the sausage again closes the orifice for compressed air; the sausage has now obtained the required diameter once again. In the case of sausage types with a smaller diameter, and especially when using sensitive casing material such as natural gut casing, the diameter of the sausage cannot be fixed accurately enough, or not at all, since the stuffing speed is usually very high for smaller sausages and the means for controlling the braking force of the casing holder in the known manner cannot respond quickly enough.
Another known apparatus of the aforementioned kind is described in the laidopen German patent application no. 35 19 021. In said apparatus, the braking force exercised on the casing holding apparatus is not adjustable. Instead, the problem of the casing flowing more quickly than required off the stuffing horn when the sausages are being stuffed, and the concomitant problem of varying sausage diameter is counteracted by inserting, after the casing holder apparatus in the form of a braking sleeve, an auxiliary braking sleeve in the direction in which the sausage is stuffed, said auxiliary braking sleeve having inwardly pointed ribs on the inside that cause the braking force of the normal casing holder to be increased. This auxiliary braking sleeve is in the form of a tube so that its free end can be moved as close as possible to the point where the sausages are twisted or clipped. Due to the restricted space at the twisting or clipping point, an embodiment of the auxiliary braking sleeve for large diameter sausages is not possible in the known embodiment. The constancy of the sausage diameter is highly dependent in said prior art on the casing material and the consistency of the emulsion. For this reason, variations in the diameter must be expected at all times. Another reason why this notorious solution is problematic is that sensitive casing material is damaged relatively easily on account of the peak loads around the ribs of the auxiliary brake sleeve member, which then causes rejections during production of the sausages.
Another notorious apparatus is described is U.S. Pat. No. 5,013,279. In the latter patent also, a chuck with ribs projecting from the inside wall is provided that essentially serves to give the sausages a curved shape, said chuck being rotated during stuffing and causing the sausages to engagingly rotate about the axis of the chuck by virtue of the engagement of said ribs. Variations in the diameter of the sausages are to be expected here, just as in the prior art discussed in the foregoing, and the risk of damage to the casing material is similarly great.
It has meanwhile become common practice to stuff certain types of sausage, for example raw sausage and boiled sausage, in natural gut casings, whereas more thin-bodied types, such as liver sausage, are preferably stuffed in synthetic casings. Whereas the caliber or diameter of synthetic casings is generally provided with very narrow tolerances, this is not so with natural gut casings. Therefore, natural casings are supplied and sold according to caliber or diameter group, for example caliber groups
18
-
20
,
20
-
22
,
22
-
24
, etc., or in intermediate sizes. The latter figures are the limit values for the diameter of the casings within the caliber groups.
The portioning devices of stuffing machines ensure that the quantities of sausage meat delivered by the stuffing machines and ejected into the casings are kept exactly the same to the greatest extent possible. If these exactly equal portions successively stuffed into the natural casing of a particular caliber group, sausages of different thicknesses and hence also of different length are produced as a natural consequence, even though all these sausages contain an identical volume of sausage meat. This is caused by variations, in the order of millimeters, in the diameter of the natural casings of a particular group. When stuffing a portion into a casing of a caliber group with a diameter of 20 mm, as initially mentioned, one receives as a result a shorter sausage than when stuffing the same portion into a natural casing that has a diameter at the lower limit of the caliber group, for example 18 mm.
Sausages of different length but with the same stuffing volume are not wanted impression that short sausages contain less sausage meat than longer sausages, because customers do not perceive the small differences in diameter. The problem for producers is that packaging must be designed for the longest sausage in each respective case, as well as for the fattest sausage in a packaging unit. This involves more expenditure of packaging material compared to packaging material of identical length and diameter.
The object of the invention was therefore to develop the apparatus described at the beginning in such a way that sausages of the same length and same volume can be produced as far as possible, even if the casing used has variations in diameter, as is commonly the case with natural casings, in particular. In order to achieve this object, it is essential to ensure that the natural casing or any other sensitive synthetic casing is not damaged during stuffing and that a smaller variation of sausage diameter and length is achieved in comparison to the prior art.
Whereas former attempts to solve this technical problem involved manual control during injection of the sausages, had only modest success even when using skilled manpower, and were beset by repeated interruptions of the stuffing process due to unavoidable bursting of the sensitive natural casings, the technical problem is elegantly solved with an apparatus of the kind initially specified in that a guide tube is disposed downstream from, and as an extension to the casing holder, the internal diameter of said guide tube being approximately the same as the smaller outer diameter of the pre-defined casing caliber and/or the pre-defined casing caliber group, the guide tube having a coating of lubricant on its inner surface and that the casing flows into and through the guide tube in the process of being stuffed.
The advantage of the solution according
Hiller Klaus
Meier Dieter
Zerbst Oliver
Little Willis
Vemag Maschinen-und Anlageneau GmbH
Wood Herron & Evans L.L.P.
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