New extruder maximises product opportunities
Date: 11 September 2008
Extended range of snack products
A new twin-screw cooker-extruder has been added to the Baker Perkins range of expandable lines for snack manufacture. The SBX Master is a solid barrel extruder offering process flexibility through a modular barrel design and a high torque motor and gearbox combination.
They give the SBX Master the ability to make a wide range of different snacks from the well-known direct expanded types through to higher added-value products with sophisticated taste and texture combinations.
This flexibility is at the heart of the Baker Perkins Snack Master expandable line concept, which allows the product range from a standard line to be extended from direct expanded snacks to higher added-value products to respond to changes in market and business conditions.
This means that a Snack Master line making popular products such as corn curls, chipsticks and maize rings can be extended in stages to produce a full range of high-specification snacks including whole / multigrain and sweet or savoury filled pillows. Baker Perkins provides the process expertise to reconfigure the lines, and works with customers to develop new product ideas. Snacks filled with real fruit in co-extruded bar, filled pillow, or imaginative 'credit card' shapes are recent innovations that will appeal to health-conscious consumers. Visual appeal can be enhanced with a range of dfferent textures and surface patterns.
The modular barrel of the SBX Master enables the length of each machine to be matched precisely to the customer's process application, and enables extension later as production needs change.
To further increase flexibility, the range of end products that can be made has been increased by incorporating a motor and gearbox able to handle twice as much torque as the previous generation of extruder.
The flexible Baker Perkins die design and segmented agitator configuration - allowing quick product changeover - has been retained, together with the high free volume agitator geometry that enables high outputs to be achieved, even on low density materials such as bran and fine milled flours.
A new, high output model has been introduced to give a capacity range from 225 to 2,000 kg/hour of direct expanded product.
Cost of ownership is driven down by design features that cut maintenance. An AC drive system is virtually maintenance free, and innovative open-frame design maximises access for cleaning and maintenance. The newly introduced splined shafts and high torque capacity of the gearbox are designed for optimum reliability and durability.
Processes that require a face cutter will benefit from a new design of this unit. Changing the cutter blade can be achieved in 15 minutes without stopping production.
The die and cutter are mounted on swing-away support arms that contribute to easy cleaning and enable the cutter to be moved into position axially, to avoid smearing product on the die face. A micrometer adjustment is used for fine tuning the position of the cutter blade; this enables the optimum position for clean cutting and minimum blade wear to be achieved.
Baker Perkins solid barrel extruders are used for a wide range of snacks; flexible die design allows a wide choice of product to be made with few change parts. They are particularly easy to use, with PLC touch-screen control, and time-saving automatic start and stop sequences as standard.
