The sliced product
Sliced products (cheeses, sausages, bacon, …) are highly demanded by consumers, so usually food producers supply them processed in slicing machines. Slicing machines usually cut blocks of shaped products into bars and frozen products with rotary knife systems that reach speeds of up to 2000 cuts per minute.
Quality issues in slices
Since each slice portion is generated in less than a second, conventional inspection systems until now have only superficially inspected the portions once they have been packaged, with no noticeable defects between the slices. Therefore, in order to inspect all the slices, a system was needed to capture images of the block before cutting and process them in line with the process.
Inspection of slices at high speed
Inspectra’s patented high-speed capture and processing technology allows images to be captured with the precise sharpness to detect the most common defects in food slices using artificial vision, synchronizing image capture according to the position of the blade in the cutting area.
Our equipment allows 100% inspection of the slices by detecting individual quality defects, thus improving the production process upstream of the slicing point. The collection of this data, allows a better evaluation of the suppliers of raw materials by quantifying the quality of their raw materials.
Since slicing is carried out at 2000 rpm, equipment capable of capturing and processing images at a very high speed is required, so we make use of ultra-fast capture cameras, parallelised software to be able to run with a minimum processor load and very powerful image processing equipment.
Slicing inspection of ham
BLOOD
Blood is a type of defect that is produced when the vein of the ham has not been cleaned correctly, manifesting itself punctually in the slicing of Serrano ham.
OXIDATION/MOULD
Sometimes, the ham can present some defect that allows the entrance of mould or air that causes an oxidation, being its detection essential to guarantee the quality of the sliced product.
EXCESS FAT
During the deboning of the ham, the excess fat is removed from the mace, but on some occasions, the fat left after the product has been sliced is excessive and does not comply with the quality parameters.
INTERLEAVER ABSENCE
Sometimes, during the slicing process, the interleaver roll is finished, and this sheet may get stuck and be absent between the slices, or be cracked or displaced from its position.
Inspection of cheese and sausage slices
REGIONAL SEGMENTATION
The equipment is parameterized in order to measure different regions of a certain color shade, allowing to locate its location within the slice and to behave if it is the expected one. We analyse different parameters related to the quality of the food, such as the percentage of different components such as fat, lean, additives, shades…
SLICE BREAKS
Depending on the type of cut made on the slicer, and the type of sliced product, slice breaks or out-of-tolerance geometries can be detected.