Tag: bakery

Doughnuts vs Donuts – Better Quality Thanks To A Super Air Knife

Published on by Brian FarnoLeave a comment

The two words, doughnut, and donut are synonymous with each other.  In research, the spelling donut is another Americanized word that didn’t catch on until the late 20th century. Either way, there are still multiple types of doughnuts. One of my favorites is shown below by one of the best donut manufacturers, NASCAR.

Maybe you are a little riskier and like some donuts that have a little less horsepower and a little more spice to them. Something like a ghost pepper doughnut that has a combination of spicy and sweet flavoring to satisfy your morning cravings for food. If so, you may be interested to know that an EXAIR Super Air Knife could have helped in the manufacturing process.

Animation Dreaming GIF by Matthew Butler - Find & Share on GIPHY

A regional bakery has opened up production and after months of determining their recipe and icing selection, they still needed some help on getting the glazing level correct on the finished doughnuts. The baked goodness would travel under a waterfall of glazing and several variables would lead to the amount of glazing that would build up/ remain on the doughnut. After testing these variables out the customer still wanted a better coating so they called EXAIR.

30″ 316 Stainless Steel Super Air Knife removing surplus glaze from doughnuts

The solution, a 30″ 316 Stainless Steel Super Air Knife to mount over the conveyor and blow down the surplus glazing into the catch pan for recirculation.  The variability in force from a gentle breeze up to a forceful, glaze stripping blast, was exactly what the baker ordered.  This setup has been in practice for months now and nothing but positive results have been tasted, I mean seen.

If you would like to discuss any point of use compressed air application, please contact us.

Brian Farno
Application Engineer
BrianFarno@EXAIR.com
@EXAIR_BF

1 – One Minute of Donuts with Joey Logano, Pennzoil, Jul 30, 2015 – Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFqjbmsUdIM&feature=emb_logo

2 – Donuts TV -Matthew Butler – retrieved from – https://giphy.com/gifs/animation-sweet-3oKIPCBcZs82sv9nsQ

Super Air Knife Cleans Baking Pans

Published on by exaircorpLeave a comment

A few weeks back I was contacted by a large baking company who was looking for a better way to pre-clean their cake and muffin pans before sending them to a wash cycle. After the pans exit the oven, an operator places the baked goods on a cooling conveyor then uses an air gun to blow out the residual crumbs. The pans are then placed on a separate conveyor and sent through a washer. The manual operation was taking a lot of extra time which resulted in reduced production.

Muffin Pan

After further discussion, I recommended they use our 24″ Super Air Knife. The Super Air Knife produces an even, high velocity curtain of air across the entire length of the knife which would provide a uniform blowoff of the pans, eliminating the manual cleaning.  Super Air Knives are extremely efficient and quiet. Operating at 80 PSIG, using a 40:1 amplification rate of entrained ambient air to compressed air consumed, they require only 2.9 SCFM per inch of knife length while maintaining a low sound level of only 69 dBA and produce a velocity of 11,800 feet per minute.

Efficient way to clean, dry or cool parts, webs or conveyors.

The Super Air Knives are available in lengths from 3″ up to 108″ in single-piece construction and offered in aluminum, 303ss or 316ss construction, they are the perfect choice for small scale or wide coverage blowoff applications. To discuss a particular application or for help selecting the best EXAIR product to fit your need, contact an application engineer at 800-903-9247.

Justin Nicholl
Application Engineer
justinnicholl@exair.com
@EXAIR_JN

 

Muffins Anyone? photo courtesy of Amy via creative commons license.

Cookie Blowoff Using The Full-Flow Air Knife

Published on by exaircorpLeave a comment

A machine manufacturer was working with a food company who was looking to design a blowoff station for their cookie making process. During the production cycle, the cookie dough is put into a former that pushes the dough through round dyes that forms several rows of cookies across a conveyor. As the cookies travel down the conveyor, they are topped with ground peanut bits and sent through a flash freezing process. It was after this process, the company was looking to install the blowoff station to remove any excess peanut bits but were concerned if the air velocity was too high, they may remove too much of the ground peanuts or possibly blow the cookies themselves off of the conveyor. Another area of concern was the amount of space available to install the station was limited, so they were needing something “compact” so they could design the machine to take the least amount of real estate as possible.

The machine designer was somewhat familiar with our Air Knives, but was unsure which design would best fit the customer’s needs so they decided to reach out for assistance. After discussing the particulars, I recommended our 36″ Stainless Steel Full-Flow Air Knife Kit. Of the 3 designs of Air Knife we offer, the Super, Standard and Full-Flow, the Full-Flow Air Knife produces the lowest outlet velocities, it is also our smallest profile offering at only 1.25″ x 1″  for stainless steel construction. The Full-Flow Air Knife provides a laminar flow of air the entire length of the knife and uses a 30:1 amplification rate (entrained air to compressed air) for efficient compressed air usage. By incorporating the pressure regulator included in the kit, they would be able to easily control the exiting air velocity to effectively remove the excess peanut bits without ejecting the cookies from the line.

Full-Flow
The Full-Flow Air Knife is the ideal choice where mounting space is limited. Lengths available up to 36″ in aluminum or stainless steel construction.

For assistance in selecting the best Air Knife to fit your needs or for additional support with another application or EXAIR product, give me a call at 800-903-9247, I’d be happy to help.

Justin Nicholl
Application Engineer
justinnicholl@exair.com
@EXAIR_JN

Super Air Knives Provide Needed Blow Off

Published on by Lee EvansLeave a comment

Dust hood

I had the pleasure of working through an application in which uncooked hamburger buns are processed and baked.  In the application, dough patties travel along a conveyor into an oven and a small, targeted blow off (technical term: “fluff”) is needed to remove excess flour.

When the flour is blown off of the dough, it is extracted by a system mounted above the conveyor.  The difficulty for this end user was in finding a reliable, laminar solution with consistent blow off force.

Enter the EXAIR Super Air Knife.

By installing an EXAIR Super Air Knife (in the appropriate material), the uneven and inefficient blow off that was originally installed was replaced with a reliable and quiet solution.  We were able to take a problematic application and turn it into a repeatable process.  And, we were able to repeat success in another similar application at another point in the same facility.

If you have an application in which repeatable, reliable, efficient solutions are needed, contact an EXAIR Application Engineer.

Lee Evans
Application Engineer
LeeEvans@EXAIR.com
@EXAIR_LE