Food slicing machine
Source: CAN Newsletter Motion Control, 2005
Weber is a leading food slicing machine manufacturer from Breidenbach, Germany with subsidiaries in two other German locations and in Kansas City, MO, USA. Under the name Slicer, the company develops and produces a range of high-performance cutting machines for industry and trade. The systems process sausage, ham, meat and cheese. Weber slicing systems can be extended to form automatic processing lines: feeding, scanning, cutting, portioning, weighing, sorting, buffering, and automatic transport in packaging machines. Since the company’s founding in 1981 Weber has assembled machines and later developed their own machines for the food-processing industry. As a matter of fact, some of the Slicer machines sold in 1987 are so durable that they are still being used today.
The company’s slicing machines slice up to 2,5 tons of sausage or cheese per hour, which is the equivalent of 8 000 slices per minute. To illustrate this number: If you use four slices per sandwich for your children’s lunch, 8 000 slices is enough to pack their lunch box for two years. The company is proud of the fact that it manufactures and assembles approximately 80 % of all parts used in their machines; they designed even the “hygienic screws” used in food slicing machines.
The Slicer 904 MCS with overlapper joins the portions cut next to each other and places them on top of each other. The portions are then fed into the packing machine on a fully automatic basis. The machine is equipped with the Pac-Drives C400 and C600 for all motion control, logic and technology functions in the slicer. Up to 17 frequency inverters are connected to the machine’s CAN network. Furthermore approximately 100 digital inputs and 100 digital outputs , the check weigher, and the optical weigher, are networked via a CAN network over approximately 50-m length.
