Major cereal brands often rely on toll processors to provide specialty ingredients such as steel-cut oats and flakes as well as toasted and coated granola cluster inclusions.
Granola clusters consist of a wide variety of ingredients, including almond slices, blueberries, cranberries, millet seed and oat flour, to name a few.
These materials have drastically different product density ranges, particle size, particle shape, material flow characteristics and cost. These differences, in combination with ever-changing product SKUs / recipes of varying ingredients and proportions, create several processing challenges. Off-spec finished products associated with inconsistent ingredient delivery and resultant inaccuracies in ingredient inventories represent a significant cost impact for toll processors that supply the cereal industry.
Thayer Scale vibratory tray-based Loss-In-Weight Feeders provide toll processors with a solution to all these challenges:
- Vibratory tray features no moving parts and provides gentle handling of a variety of fragile and malleable product shapes.
- Vibratory tray provides a uniform, pulse-free delivery of material over a wide operating range (100:1) regardless of particle size and shape.
- Thayer Scale’s exclusive Spiralator™ unique, counter-rotating vertical agitator gently dilates ingredients with asymmetrical particle shapes, as well as ingredients that bridge under their own weight to provide reliable, uninterrupted material discharge from the weigh hopper to the vibratory tray.
- Sanitary, all stainless-steel construction and wash-down rated electrical components tolerate frequent sanitation intervals between product changeovers.
- A mass counter-balanced weight sensing system interposed between the feeder and a single load cell, in combination with Thayer Scale instrumentation, delivers material accurately and in the correct proportion.
- Thayer Scale instrumentation systems provide accurate totalization of ingredients handled. Toll processors know precisely how much product has been used, greatly improving inventory control and cost at the end of each campaign, shift, day, etc.
Thayer Scale equipment allows toll processors to produce a consistent product despite numerous upfront variables.
Weighing equipment for cereal processing
Food Processing Conveyor Belt Scales
- Designed to seamlessly integrate into existing conveyors
- Mass counter-balanced weight sensing system specifically engineered to accurately weigh “low density” materials (bulk densities ranging from 0.5 to 12 pounds per cubic foot (8 to 192 kilograms per cubic meter)
- Available with 2 to 5 idler weigh bridge based on material load
- Designed for installation in horizontal to inclined (up to 12-degrees) conveyors
- Available in “Scale Over” or “Scale Under” configuration based on process layout
Weigh belts
- Highly accurate for reliable, repeatable measurements and batch control
- Available with open or enclosed construction
- Designed to fit new or existing process flow streams
- Cantilevered conveyor assembly simplifies maintenance
Loss-in-weight Feeders
- Auger discharge
- Vibratory pan discharge
- Feed rates from grams/minute to tons/hour
Hopper and silo material flow promotion solutions
- Provide consistent, uninterrupted material flow