A meat processing system comprising a blade, a blade movement assembly, a controller and a conveyor. The blade is configured to cut a carcass into pieces and lies substantially in a blade plane. The conveyor is configured to move the carcass along a first axis. The controller is configured to control the blade movement assembly to rotate the blade or a portion of the blade to vary an angle between the blade plane and the first axis. The blade movement assembly may also be configured to translate the blade to move the blade transverse to the first axis. A method of operating a meat processing system is also disclosed. The method includes conveying a carcass or section of carcass along a first axis, controlling a blade movement assembly to rotate a blade or a portion of a blade to vary the angle between a blade plane and the first axis, and cutting the carcass or section of carcass into pieces.

A food processing system and a method for processing and batching food items conveyed by a conveyor means where the batches fulfil at least one target criteria including at least one weight target, including a first weight determining means for determining the weight of incoming food items, a batching system, a food item separation device positioned downstream in relation to the first weight determining means and upstream in relation to the batching system, and a control system for controlling the batching system and the food item separation device. The controlling including, repeatedly: monitoring the weight of the incoming food items, determining, based on the weight of the incoming food items, a prospect indicator indicating the prospect to meet the target criteria for the batches such that each batch fulfils the at least one target criteria, and comparing if the prospect indicator fulfils a pre-defined criteria.

A cutting machine having a first wheel pair and an opposite second wheel pair, an first vertical wheel, an opposite second vertical wheel, a first drive wheel, a second opposite drive wheel, and a single cutting blade, the first vertical and the second vertical wheels being configured to travel simultaneously and in a same horizontal direction, the first and the second wheel pairs being configured to travel simultaneously and in a same vertical direction, the first wheel pair having a first slanted wheel and the second wheel pair having a second slanted wheel, the single cutting blade being routed over all wheels such that at any moment during a travel of the single cutting blade while driven by the first and second drive wheels, a vertical blade portion extends between and can travel horizontally with the first vertical wheel and the second vertical wheel during vertical cutting and a horizontal blade portion extends between and can travel vertically with the first and second wheel pairs during horizontal cutting, wherein the slant of the first slanted wheel and the slant of the second slanted wheel prevents intersection of the horizontal blade portion and the vertical blade portion.

Cutting wheels equipped with knife assemblies suitable for performing size reduction operations on products, methods of operating cutting wheels, knife holders for such knife assemblies, methods of manufacturing knife holders, and slicing machines capable of utilizing such cutting wheels. The knife assemblies each have a leading edge that faces a direction of rotation of the cutting wheel, a trailing edge oppositely disposed from the leading edge, and a cutting edge on the leading edge. Each knife assembly further has a knife holder having a first surface that faces the products advanced toward the cutting wheel in a feed direction and a registration surface formed in the first surface. The registration surface is defined by at least a first recessed planar surface that is recessed a distance relative to the first surface and defines with the first surface at least a first step therebetween.

A method for forming aggregates of food pieces by arranging a plurality of food pieces such that the food pieces at least partially overlap one another is provided. The method automatically changes the number of food pieces forming each aggregate and a pitch at which the food pieces are arranged so as to limit the weights of the aggregates within a predetermined permissible range and to form each aggregate such that the total length of the aggregate is a preset length. The method also automatically changes the number of food pieces forming each aggregate and the pitch at which the food pieces are arranged according to the length of the food piece in the arrangement direction.

A suction cutting conveyor of an automatic blade cutting machine for sheet materials, including a plurality of cutting supports rigidly connected to a drive mechanism driven along rectilinear and curvilinear trajectories, each cutting support including a plurality of bristles each having a foot rigidly connected to a sole and a head opposite to the foot and on which a sheet material to be cut is intended to rest, the sole of each cutting support being capable of being able to elastically deform following the trajectories of the drive mechanism.

In order to keep the overall length of an insertion feed unit small despite high variability, a vertical paternoster buffer is used as a buffer therein.

In order to be able to safely remove the heavy and very sharp blade from the machine, which is overhanging when mounted, in contrast to known solutions, the entire cutting unit is not swung out of the machine so far that the blade is easily accessible, but instead the cutting unit together with the blade support and blade drive remain unchanged in position in the machine, and only the blade carrier of a mounting device is brought into contact with the blade.

Then the blade can first be fixed to the protective blade carrier before the connection of the blade to the blade support is released, and then the blade carrier loaded with the blade can be removed from the machine in a simple manner, for example pulled out sideways.

A bundle breaker including first and second platen assemblies mounted above upstream and downstream breaking supports with first and second actuators for moving the platen assemblies toward and away from the breaking supports and a third actuator for moving the downstream breaking support to perform a breaking operation. The first platen assembly and/or the second platen assembly each includes an upper platen assembly and a lower platen assembly supported by the upper platen assembly, the upper platen assembly including an upper platen and a support for the upper platen and the lower platen assembly including a lower platen supported for movement relative to the upper platen in the vertical direction and relative to the upper platen in the longitudinal direction.

An index tab forming system sequentially forms index tabs to a plurality of sheets without replacing a blade die. The index tab forming system includes a rotary die cutter 5 on which a long blade die that can form an index tab at any position of the sheet in the conveyance direction is mounted. Furthermore, the index tab forming system includes a rotational speed calculation unit configured to calculate the rotational speed of a conveyance roller pair 37 based on the rotational position of a die cut roller 50, a sheet position detection signal provided by a sheet detection sensor 40, the number of times of sheet conveyance, and a shift distance between respective index tabs and a conveyance roller control unit configured to control the rotational speed of the conveyance roller pair 37 based on the calculated rotational speed.