The Assessment of the Limit State of the Vacuum Piston Type Dough Divider by Oil Consumption

Abstract

Introduction. Agriculture includes one of the branches of raw material processing, the final product of which is bread making. At the same time, the most complex operation in the technological chain of bread making is the division of the finished dough into billets of the same mass. This operation is performed by vacuum-piston type dough dividers. Under operating conditions, the service life of dividers is 30-40% lower than the manufacturer’s stated. In the technical documentation there is not point of the limit state of dividers, so they continued to be used with high costs of technological materials that determine the cost of the finished product. The purpose of the work is to determine the criterion for evaluating the performance of dough dividers and the limit value of the criterion. Materials and Methods. Evaluation of the technical condition of vacuum piston type dough dividers was based on the edible oil consumption of food line WP 32 (manufacturer AIMOL). To measure the mass of the consumed oil and the mass of the dough pieces, scales were used with an accuracy of ±0.1 g and ±1 g, respectively. Results. Based on the results of the analysis of the operation principle of dough dividers, the criterion of efficiency is called the oil consumption, which is responsible for the accuracy of weighing the dough through creating a vacuum in the suction chamber when filling gaps in the coupling of parts. When evaluating the technical condition of machines by manufacturing 300 test pieces configured for a mass of 500 g the maximum oil consumption is obtained equal to 218 g. According to the maximum oil consumption, the allowed oil consumption is determined to be 109 g. Discussion and Conclusion. It is established that at bakery enterprises, about 30% of used dough dividers have an over-extreme limit state and the accuracy in weighing the dough cannot be restored by increasing the oil consumption. However, starting from the oil consumption above the allowed value of 109 g, the machines need major repairs. The obtained values of the limit and allowed state of dough dividers are widely used in bakery enterprises to assess their technical condition.