Plastic article or earthenware shaping or treating: apparatus – With indicator – signal – recorder – illuminator – or inspection...
Patent
1990-01-09
1991-09-03
Woo, Jay H.
Plastic article or earthenware shaping or treating: apparatus
With indicator, signal, recorder, illuminator, or inspection...
425285, B28B 100
Patent
active
050449141
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The invention concerns a scoop for serving portions of food, especially ice cream, comprising a handle attached to a spoon.
In the gastronomic trade portioning scoops are used for removing and measuring a quantity suitable for consumption. By immersing or scraping from a larger quantity of food-- this may be ice cream, mashed potato, dessert, chocolate mousse, cream, rice or similar-- a suitable portion is grasped by a spoon formed as a semicircular shell, transferred to the place of dispensing, and there deposited in the dessert bowl or ice cream cone, which is usually accomplished therein that a wiper is disposed in the shell-shaped spoon, which by operation of the handle executes a swivel motion along the interior surface of the spoon, and in this manner scrapes off the particular food and releases it in the form of a hemisphere.
Not last it is known through the sale of ice cream that the price required from the customer is determined by the quantity of food from the number of dispensed portions. For an entrepreneur and businessman problems often occur through the fact that with dispensing by an employee, a control of the dispensed quantity is in principal impossible, so that the possibility of personal gain is open to the employee, and is often found to occur.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
On this basis it is the object of this invention further to develop this type of portioning scoop in such a manner that direct and unfalsifiable recording of the total dispensed quantity is possible.
According to this invention two solutions which can be realized completely independently of each other are proposed. One consists in disposing a temperature sensor in the spoon, which records the temperature changes and uses them as a counting impulse.
The solution according to this invention is suitable for apportioning all foods that have a temperature deviating upwardly or downwardly from that of the surrounding room. This is the general case. Foods intended for consumption, such as puree, rice, and most desserts have a higher temperature, and other foods such as ice cream, fruits and similar a considerably lower temperature. Thus the temperature of ice cream is usually -12 to -14 degrees Celsius. The function is as follows: upon the food being grasped with the portioning scoop, a temperature transfer takes place which is registered and signalled by the temperature sensor. These changes can be recorded preferably electronically, altered, and used as a counting impulse. The processing and adaptation to the counting unit need not be described in detail, and are familiar per se to a person skilled in the art, who for example differentiates the signals from the temperature sensor and transmits the signals of one polarity to a counter, and for example suppresses the others, so that as a result only the temperature increase and not the temperature decrease is recorded and counted. In order to suppress faults and faulty readings, thresholds can be specified, which when exceeded register a counting impulse. Furthermore, measures can be taken so that only rapid temperature changes are recorded and counted, since natural temperature fluctuations take place relatively slowly, and naturally should not be recorded.
The temperature sensor should be chosen such that it operates as fast as possible and without inertia, especially because if it is attached, for example, with an adhesive, a certain thermal insulation is caused. For improved processing of the signal it is further recommended to use temperature sensors with greater sensitivity, i.e. those that provide a strong output signal upon small temperature changes in the particular measuring range. The larger are the output signals, even with small temperature changes, the better is the processing and the faster can small temperature fluctuations be recorded. The latter is of importance since the heating or cooling of the portioning scoop takes place only within a relatively short time. Experiments have shown that even fractions of a second are sufficien
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patent: 4555040 (1985-11-01), Butenschon
patent: 4583868 (1986-04-01), Girling
Davis Robert B.
Schindler Edwin D.
Woo Jay H.
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