Importance

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Abstract

A novel method and apparatus of controlling dough feeding to process and portioning machines in automated processing lines is provided. The completed system can supply dough and dough like materials to a portioner and or allow it to continue its operation during a period of time when the one or more feeding machine needs to go to a mixer to obtain another load of bulk material, a refill cycle, and returns to a home station so as to resume feeding operations of dough. The desired effect is to have a feeding system that can both store dough to continue dough supply to one or more portioning machine(s) while the feeding machine(s) can go to a mixer to obtain a new batch of bulk dough and again return to home position where it can feed dough to one or more conveyor system(s) to maintain feed of dough to portioning machine(s) without an interruption due to stoppages in feed arising from the need for the feeder to go to a mixer and receive additional dough from the mixer and then return to the feeding conveyors. Additionally the controller allows for a variety of settings regarding the dough level and the portioner to prevent air entrapment.

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First Claim