A celebration cake sells on its look, and a design in several colours is often piped by hand, which depends on people who are hard to find. A stringer runs continuously: the chocolate also lands on the belt, and every cake gets the same lines in one colour.
Each colour has its own depositor in the line, with its own heated chocolate supply and its own vision system. The cakes pass under them one after the other. At each depositor, vision measures the position, rotation and outline of every cake, and the FoodJet Control Platform fits that colour of the design to that one cake. No two cakes are the same, so the design adapts to each one, even when a cake lies rotated or is a little larger than the next. Each colour gets its own place in the pattern, defined in the recipe: next to the other colours, or on top of them.
Happy Birthday on one run, a heart or a star the next: a design is a file, not a tool. You load another recipe during production, with no moulds, nozzle plates or stops.
Each nozzle opens only above a cake, so the chocolate you pay for ends up on your cakes, and your line needs less cleaning.
Vision checks every cake against the limits the operator has set. A cake that is damaged or misshapen gets no chocolate, and its status is passed on to your line, so your reject system knows which cake to take out.
By hand or stringer | FoodJet with vision | |
|---|---|---|
Colours | By hand, or one colour per stringer | Several colours, a depositor per colour |
Design | Skilled hand work, or the same lines | A word, a motif or a seasonal design from the recipe |
Cakes that shift or differ | A fixed pattern misses part of them | Vision fits the design to each cake |
Chocolate on the belt | Also between the cakes and on the belt | Only an occasional drop |
New design | Retraining, or new tooling | Load another recipe |
Cake out of specification | Picked out by hand, or decorated anyway | No chocolate, and a signal to your reject system |
Alternatives to shower head and waterfall depositors · Graphical decoration · MDLVW600
Send us your cake size and shape, the colours and the design you want, your chocolate or compound, and your line width and speed. We test it with your own cakes. After the trial, we advise on the setup for your line and send you a proposal.