Industrial Bakery Combination Checkweigher...

Trading standards regards the entire product that is despatched from a bakery bearing the same markings as being produced by one “line”. It is therefore allowable for one actual line to augment the results of another that is running an identical product and package.

For example if one line has an average weight that is below the declared (Qn), taken alone the checkweigher would have to reject packs to bring that average up. Virtual Checkweighing allows another line that has a higher average weight to have its results “pooled” with it thus avoiding so many rejects.

The net result is a greater saving on wasted product.

How it works: Upon weighing each pack the check weigher broadcasts the weight of the pack and its average weight so far in the batch. It also listens to the broadcasts from all of the other checkweighers in the same group. These broadcast occur over an Ethernet local area network to which all of the checkweighers are connected.

It is therefore able to calculate the overall average weight of the group and make a decision on each pack whether to reject it or not based on the group performance.

The use of current network techniques enables data to flow between all devices on the same network segment. Sparc Systems have developed the Sparc 420 control system for use on its entire end of line inspection equipment range and the 420 has much greater processing capacity compared to typical checkweighers allowing each checkweigher in a group to keep a local tally of the pack weights of all of the checkweighers in that group.

This can be achieved by each checkweigher broadcasting its pack weight as soon as it occurs and “listening” to all of the weights broadcast by the others in the group. It will then make a local decision as to whether to reject each pack based on the overall average of all the checkweighers in that group. That decision will always be applied immediately based on all received weights up to the point of decision.

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