Importance

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Abstract

A machine for slicing oblong fruit which have no pits, such as pitted olives, includes an inclined roller-type conveyor belt extending between an open-bottom hopper-type loading station to an interdigitated rotary knife-type of cutting station served by a comb-type of slice-unloading station. The hopper is open not only upwards and downwards, but also towards downstream, and the rollers are annularly corrugated and made to rotate towards the hopper immediately downstream of the hopper, so as to load the conveyor belt with a single-depth layer of fruit oriented long axis transversally of the conveyor. At the cutting station, the knives on the upper knife drum spike the fruit in a row and transfer those fruit from the conveyor into the nip between the upper and lower knife drums where the knives on both drums cooperate to slice the fruit. By preference, the knives are disk-shaped with regular patterns of small teeth regularly interrupted by individual larger teeth.

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First Claim