The conveying apparatus (1) for an industrial slicing machine comprises: a lower conveyor (2) designed to drag restingly a food product in a feed direction (D); and an upper conveyor (4) of floating type arranged above the lower conveyor (2) and comprising a frame (40) that carries a motor-driven conveyor belt (41), adapted to push in the feed direction (D) the product dragged by the lower conveyor (2) and closed in a loop around a plurality of linkage devices (50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55) mounted on the frame. The belt (41) defines two active branches (42, 43) facing the lower conveyor (2), adapted to contact above and push the product and connected together by a recessed branch (44) that defines a concavity (C) facing the lower conveyor (2).

An industrial slicer (1) comprises a cutting station (T) that includes: a plurality of blades (21, 22, 23) for slicing a food product (2), the blades (21, 22, 23) being distanceable and nearable to one another in pairs at various reciprocal distances, so as to obtain slices having thicknesses corresponding to said distances; and adjustment means (30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45) for adjusting said distances and comprising a plurality of adjustment devices (30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35) that are adapted to act upon respective blades (21, 22, 23), of which at least two of said devices can be activated independently of each other.

The invention relates to an apparatus for slicing food products, in particular to high-performance slicers, having a cutting region at whose end a cutting blade moves, in particular in a rotating and/or revolving manner, in a cutting plane, and having a transport device which transports products to be sliced in a direction of transport over one track or multiple tracks to the cutting region, with the transport device comprising a plurality of positioners for the products in the or each transport track driven simultaneously in the direction of transport and arranged spaced apart from one another in the direction of transport.

The apparatus for detecting physical characteristics of food products, such as poultry, meat or fish, includes: a conveyor for transporting the products; a floating belt, located above the conveyor so as to define an analysis zone (Z) therebetween; a first and a second detecting device, located on opposite sides of an advancement path, each adapted to acquire a multiplicity of partial profiles of the products in the analysis zone (Z), a processing unit connected to the first and second detecting devices and including a first shape module configured to determine the conformation of the external surface of a first portion of the product, based on the partial profiles acquired by the first detecting device; and a second shape module (62) configured to determine the conformation of the external surface of a second portion of the product, based on the partial profiles acquired by the second detecting device.

A cutting machine for cutting up pre-compressed meat strands into slices and a method for slicing pre-compressed meat strands, wherein the blade is moved forward in the feed direction to a limited extent after the blade has completely cut off a slice, and is either subsequently or simultaneously moved backward in the transversal direction. In this way, the forward movement of the meat strand to cut off the next slice can be started earlier.

A dividing device is used for dividing a piece of meat with bone contained therein, in particular for cutting off a slice, which device has, in particular on a supporting body, both a moving blade and a moving saw, in order to have to saw through only the rigid part of the piece of meat with the saw and, usually overlapping in time or afterwards, to cut the elastic part with the blade, but if possible in the same cutting-gap of the saw.

A method for producing a multi-slice bacon shingle is provided, comprising introducing a bulk meat product, such as a pork belly or other non-pork meat product, into a slicer; setting the slicer to control predetermined slicing parameters, namely blade speed, extent of overlap between adjacent bacon slices, and separation between successive bacon shingles; slicing the bulk meat product into bacon slices in accordance with the slicing parameters to produce a plurality of bacon shingles, wherein the adjacent bacon slices of each bacon shingle form a predetermined overlap between the adjacent bacon slices; and cooking the bacon shingles to a predetermined cook condition, wherein the adjacent bacon slices are caused to adhere to one another at the predetermined overlap.

A conveyor device for conveying food products on a plurality of parallel conveyor tracks and for formatting the food products in a specific product format, especially for conveying and formatting stacks or interleaved units made of a plurality of slices of cheese or meat products is provided. The conveyor device fills a product gap on one of the conveyor tracks incoming on the input side with a food product so that on the output side all parallel conveyor tracks are supplied with the food products when a product gap is sensed. A corresponding method is also provided.

Method and system for optically assessing properties of a body on at least one sectional surface of at least one cut introduced in the body in question. The sectional surface is thereby optically recorded directly during the cutting operation by an image acquisition unit, namely, by means of optical sensors of a blade of a cutting tool that is designed for this purpose. The data resulting from a digitization of the sensor signals that have been converted into electrical signals are then processed in an image processing device to visualize the at least one sectional surface on at least one display or/and to create reports in regard to the characteristics of the body or/and to classify the body in accordance with a classification system, or/and to derive control signals for a subsequent further processing of the body or of parts produced by the execution of the at least one cut.

At a device for treating a product in a receiving trough (1) which has at least one opening (5) for receiving the product, the treatment of the product is to take place by inner and outer blades (8; 9) which are arranged in the receiving trough (1) and can be driven separately by drives (14; 16). The drive (14) for the at least one inner blade (8) should be located on the same side of the receiving trough (1) as the drive (16) for the at least one outer blade (9).