Importance

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Abstract

Apparatus for slicing or skinning bacon, fish or like products has a frame which supports an adjustable knife downstream of an endless belt conveyor serving to deliver successive products along a horizontal path into the range of a rotary traction wheel which is driven to advance the products past the knife. A rotary hold-down device with a row of elastic discs is installed in a shroud which normally overlies the knife and the traction wheel as well as at least a portion of the conveyor and is mounted on two pairs of levers which enable the hold-down device to move in parallelism with as well as at right angles to the upper reach of the conveyor so that the discs can conform to the configuration of the upper side of a product approaching and moving past the knife. The shroud is biased to maintain the hold-down device in a starting position close to the cutting edge of the knife in the absence of products in the path. To this end, one pair of levers is connected with a coil spring which urges such levers against a first stop in the frame. The other pair of levers is of variable length and each such lever is connected with a second spring tending to reduce the length of the respective lever whereby the shroud is urged against a second stop on the frame. The product is fed through a channel which has several mutually inclined portions and is further configurated and/or dimensioned in such a way that the hand of an operator which extends through the channel cannot reach the severing station.

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First Claim