Arcall state of the art cheese cutting system comes on line - C52

Cheese manufacturers are extremely conscious of waste and what the industry calls giveaway- over-sized portions. Portion size must be controlled very tightly, not only to meet legislative demands, but also, from a financial perspective, to create portions that are not too heavy, and maximise yield from the cheese available.

The C52 has been developed for the UK market from it's Scandinavian predecessor the C50. The C52 along with the Intelligent Stick Cutter, Separation and Orientation Modules have been specifically designed to meet the requirements of the UK cheese packing industry.

The C52 Fixed Weight Cutter uses the latest Camera/Laser vision system with an AEW Delford weigher to determine the parameters of individual sticks to be cut. The system then calculates the required cut pattern to achieve fixed weight pieces of either slab or wedge profile. Intelligent handling, rejects any trim pieces directly out the machine for collection and correctly orientates portions, ready for packing.

The C52 can be either manually fed using the stick loading module, or automatically from the Intelligent Stick Cutter. For manual loading the blocks are pre-cut using an existing portion cutter such as an Arcall C21 or C23 or a simple stick cutter such as the Arcall C44. Alternatively the C52 can be coupled directly with the Arcall Intelligent Stick Cutter, or this option can be added at a later date.

The Intelligent Block Cutter links directly to the C52 control system and shares a common 'Operator Interface' for product selection, machine status etc. This unit determines the weight and height of each incoming block and positions a horizontal halving wire to produce the optimum split to maximise the number of portions, it also adjusts vertical wires to produce even width sticks. These sticks are then orientated and separated to transfer each individual stick across the infeed 'Data Gathering Station' of the C52.

Arcall sells its C52 cheese cutter on the basis of a giveaway level of less than 1 percent, so it has to make sure it can offer the best possible accuracy, whilst increasing productivity.