Patent Application
20060162518
1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to meat weighing and cutting devices and, more particularly, to an exact weight meat cutting device which includes a frame, a main and an upper pressing conveyor belts to compress the meat product therebetween, a weight measurement device such as a scale positioned adjacent and immediately below the forward end of the main conveyor belt to weigh meat product placed on the main conveyor belt, at least two laser displacement sensors mounted on opposite sides of the main conveyor belt for measuring the width and length of the meat product, a programable computer system connected to the laser displacement sensors and scale operative to form a three-dimensional image of the meat product and determine the precise cutting location on the meat product to obtain a slice of predetermined weight and a cutting device vertically adjustably mounted on the frame intermediate the main and upper pressing conveyor belts for cutting the meat product as the meat product passes through the device.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The meat packing industry has numerous types of slicing and cutting devices each designed to perform a specific function such as cutting a particular type of meat product or removing or separating one type of meat product from another during processing of the carcass. The vast majority of these devices, however, do not include any mechanism by which the size of the resulting meat product may be determined, and particularly do not include any mechanism by which the weight of the resulting meat product may be predetermined and set by the operator of the machine to produce a series of meat product slices from successive meat products which have generally identical weights. Some devices have been proposed in the prior art which attempt to address and solve this particular problem, including Akesson et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,868,951, Helsene et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,662,029, and Newman, U.S. Pat. No. 5,668,634. Each of the cited prior art devices, however, include inherent deficiencies which do not completely eliminate the difficulties encountered by one attempting to process and create a meat product section having an exact weight. Furthermore, to a large extent, these prior art devices remain labor-intensive, and as the intention of such devices should be to decrease the amount of labor needed to produce the meat product, these devices are deficient in this aspect. There is therefore a need for an exact weight meat cutting device which is safe and economical in operation and produces quality exact weight cuts of meat in a rapid and efficient manner.
It should also be noted that many of the devices found in the prior art which ostensibly teach towards exact weight meat cutting devices require substantial pre-processing of the meat product in order to ensure that the meat product is of uniform size, shape, and weight before being cut into selected weight amounts. It is clear that such an amount of pre-processing merely switches the labor from after the use of the device to before the use of the device, and thus presents little, if any, reduction in the amount of labor and time needed to produce an exact weight meat product. There is therefore a need for an exact weight meat cutting device which is capable of accepting cuts of meat which have differing sizes, shapes, and weights, and processing each of them regardless of the starting values to produce a finished exact weight meat product.
Therefore, an object of the present invention is to provide an exact weight meat cutting device which will automatically accept and process a meat product to produce an exact weight finished meat cut.
Another object of the present invention is to provide an exact weight meat cutting device which includes a frame, upper and lower conveyor belts cooperating to secure and move the meat product forward therebetween, a scale for weighing the meat product, measurement devices for measuring the width of the meat product, a measurement device for the height of the meat product, a computing device operative to compute the volume of the meat product, and an adjustment device for adjusting the height of the cutting blade relative to the meat product to produce a cut of meat having an exact weight predetermined by the user of the invention.
Another object of the present invention is to provide an exact weight meat cutting device which does not require significant pre-processing of the meat product prior to use of the device, specifically regarding the height, width, and length dimensions and weight of the meat product, as each of these factors are taken into account by the exact weight meat cutting device of the present invention.
Another object of the present invention is to provide an exact weight meat cutting device which includes a separator plate extending rearwards of the end of the lower conveyor belt to keep the upper and lower slices separated for further processing of those sections.
Another object of the present invention is to provide an exact weight meat cutting device which includes an easily programmable computing device which will produce specific cuts of meat having exact weights as determined by a user of the present invention.
Another object of the present invention is to provide an exact weight meat cutting device which does not require highly specialized skills or training in order to operate the device properly.
Finally, an object of the present invention is to provide an exact weight meat cutting device which is relatively simple and durable in design and operation and is safe, effective, and efficient in use.
The present invention provides an exact weight meat cutting device including a frame, a lower conveyor belt mounted on the frame and having a forward end and a rearward end and an upper conveyor belt height-adjustably mounted on the frame and extending generally parallel with and spaced above the lower conveyor belt. A weighing device such as a scale is mounted on the frame adjacent the forward end of the lower conveyor belt operative to weigh meat product placed on the lower conveyor belt and at least two displacement sensors are mounted on the frame on opposite sides of the lower conveyor belt, each of the at least two displacement sensors operative to incrementally read the distance between each of the at least two displacement sensors and an adjacent side of a meat product when the meat product on the lower conveyor belt passes between the at least two displacement sensors. The lower conveyor belt and the upper conveyor belt cooperate to transport the meat product through the exact weight meat cutting device towards the rearward end of the lower conveyor belt. A computing device is in information transmission connection with the weighing means and the at least two displacement sensors, the computing device operative to receive the weight of the meat product, the height between the upper and lower conveyor belts and the incremental distance readings from the at least two displacement sensors and compute the volume of the meat product via calculation of width times length times height for each incremental section of the meat product. The computing device is further operative to determine the amount of meat product which will be cut from the meat product to produce a remainder piece and an exact weight piece, the exact weight piece of the meat product having a selected weight as desired by a user of the exact weight meat cutting device. A meat product slicing device is positioned intermediate the forward and rearward ends of the lower conveyor belt, the meat product slicing means including position-adjustable blade means, the position-adjustable blade means interposed between the upper conveyor belt and the lower conveyor belt and operative to separate the exact weight piece from the remainder piece of the meat product. The computing device is also operatively connected to the meat product slicing means to adjust the positioning of the position-adjustable blade means between the upper conveyor belt and the lower conveyor belt to separate the exact weight piece from the remainder piece of the meat product as determined by the computing means. Finally, the lower conveyor belt and the upper conveyor belt further cooperate to transport the meat product through the exact weight meat cutting device into contact with and past the adjustable blade means towards the rearward end of the lower conveyor belt whereby the meat product is sliced into the exact weight piece and the remainder piece.
The present invention addresses and corrects many of the disadvantages found in the prior art. For example, the use of the exact weight meat cutting device will greatly reduce waste and inefficiency in the production of meat products as exact weight slices of meat can immediately taken from the device and wrapped for distribution to the consumer without requiring further processing. Furthermore, because the final weight of the exact weight meat product may be easily changed by use of the computing device, it is a simple matter to produce many different weights of meat cuts depending on the desires of the end consumer. Also, as the present invention is designed for use with many different meat product types, including meat, chicken, pork, fish, etc., it can be used in many different packing plants in many different situations. Finally, as the exact weight meat cutting device of the present invention performs the measurement, separation, and removal of the exact weight slice in one device via one continuous operation, the processing of the meat product to produce the exact weight slice is performed without slowing or impeding the processing line. It is therefore seen that the present invention provides a substantial improvement over those devices found in the prior art.
The exact weight meat cutting device 10 of the present invention is shown best in
In the preferred embodiment, the main conveyor belt 14 would be a variable speed conveyor and would further include a weight measurement device 50 such as an electronic scale mounted adjacent the forward end of main conveyor belt 14 directly underneath the main conveyor belt 14 to weigh meat product 100 placed on the main conveyor belt 14. An optical incremental encoding device 52 also is positioned at the forward end 18 of main conveyor belt 14 which works in conjunction with the weighing device 50 to identify the particular piece of meat product 100 which has been placed on the main conveyor belt 14 and track it as it passes through the exact weight meat cutting device 10 of the present invention. The proper tracking of each meat product 100 passing through the exact weight meat cutting device 10 of the present invention is important to ensure that the cutting of the meat product 100 is performed in a manner befitting the particular meat product 100 passing through the device, specifically that each meat product 100 has its own unique cutting location to produce the finished meat product, therefore the exact weight meat cutting device 10 of the present invention must be aware of which particular meat product 100 on main conveyor belt 14 is about to be cut. The optical incremental encoding device 52 provides this information to the computing device 80 which is mounted on frame 12 adjacent the main conveyor belt 14, as shown best in
Once the weight of the meat product 100 has been determined by weighing device 50, and that information has been transferred to the computing device 80, the meat product 100 is moved into the exact weight meat cutting device 10 via main conveyor belt 14, as shown best in
Mounted on opposite sides of the main conveyor belt 14 are a pair of laser displacement sensors 54a and 54b which point across the main conveyor belt 14 perpendicular to the main conveyor belt 14. Each of these laser displacement sensors 54a and 54b are operative to return a distance reading when it encounters a solid object passing in front of the laser, similar in operation to laser range-finding devices with modifications for accuracy and distance for use with the present invention. When no meat product is passing through the exact weight meat cutting device 10, each laser displacement sensor 54a and 54b reads the distance from one side of the main conveyor belt 14 to the other. However, as a meat product 100 is moved into the exact weight meat cutting device 10 of the present invention, each of the laser displacement sensors 54a and 54b identify the leading edge of the meat product 100 as it passes between the laser displacement sensors 54a and 54b, thus identifying the beginning section of the meat product 100 and simultaneously beginning to read the distance from the adjacent side of the meat product 100 to the particular laser displacement sensors 54a and 54b positioned on opposite sides of the main conveyor belt 14. The laser displacement sensors 54a and 54b then signal the computing device 80 to tell the computing device 80 that the meat product 100 is passing in front of the laser displacement sensors 54a and 54b, and the computing device 80 thus begins to measure the length of the meat product 100 which may be determined either by the length of time the meat product 100 passes in front of the laser displacement sensors 54a and 54b multiplied by the speed of the main conveyor belt 14 to derive the length of the meat product 100 or by measuring the number of measurements taken by each of the laser displacement sensors 54a and 54b as will be described immediately hereafter. The laser displacement sensors 54 as and 54b take measurements at approximately one millimeter intervals which determine the width of the meat product 100, thus forming a three-dimensional representation of the shape of the meat product 100 and also producing a length measurement for the meat product 100. This process continues until the rear end of the meat product 100 passes the laser displacement sensors 54a and 54b which then signal the computing device 80 that the end of the meat product 100 has been reached. The computing device 80 then computes the width, length, and height of the meat product 100, thus permitting the volume of the meat product 100 to be derived through a simple calculation of width times length times height for each one millimeter section, then adding the volumes together to obtain the total volume of the meat product 100. It is important to note that the vast majority of meat products 100 passing through the exact weight meat cutting device 10 of the present invention will not have regular widths due to the inherent differences between various types of meat products. However, the approximation produced by measurements of the width of the meat product 100 approximately every millimeter along the length of the meat product 100 results in a fairly specific three-dimensional representation of the height, width, and length of the meat product being produced, which may be used by the computing device 80 to produce an accurate value for the volume of the meat product 100.
Once the measurements for the meat product 100 have been input into the computing device 80, the computing device 80 via its software programming calculates the volume of the meat product 100 and determines the amount of meat product 100 which will be cut from the top of the meat product 100 to produce a top slice 102 and a bottom piece 104, the bottom piece 104 of the meat product having the exact weight predetermined by the exact weight meat cutting device 10 as desired by the operator of the present invention. Once the computing device 80 has calculated the amount which must be removed from the meat product 100 to produce the exact weight bottom piece 104, that information is transferred to the cutting blade assembly 20, in particular to a servo motor 21 which adjusts the height of the cutting blade assembly 20 or the cutting blade 22 itself between the main conveyor belt 14 and upper pressing conveyor belt 16, as shown best in
An important feature of the present invention is that each meat product 100 which is fed through the exact weight meat cutting device 10 is separately weighed and measured to produce the correct cutting location for each meat product 100. Moreover, this is done automatically once the meat product 100 is placed on the main conveyor belt 14 by measurements via the weighing device 50 and the laser displacement sensors 54a and 54b, and thus processing of a great number of separate meat products 100 may proceed quickly and efficiently without needing to readjust or recalibrate the present invention for each and every meat product being fed through the device.
It should be noted that the length of the meat product 100, although determinable by the length of time needed for the meat product 100 to pass by the laser displacement sensors 54a and 54b, as described previously, may also be determined by merely adding the number of measurements taken as the meat product passes by the laser displacement sensors 54a and 54b, as each measurement is taken approximately one millimeter apart. By adding the number of measurements, the exact length of the meat product 100 may be determined. In fact, there are several different ways by which the length and width of the meat product 100 may be determined by use of the laser displacement sensors 54a and 54b, each of which should be understood to be a part of this disclosure and a part of this invention. However, that being said, it has been found that the above-described process of measuring the length and width of the meat product 100 provides a simple, straightforward method by which the length and width of the meat product 100 may be obtained, and therefore its use with the present invention is preferred.
Once the meat product 100 has been cut by the cutting blade 22, the sectioned top slice 102 and exact weight bottom piece 104 are available for further processing as determined by the user of the present invention. It is expected that the bottom piece 104, being of the exact weight predetermined by the operator of the present invention, will be generally ready for packaging and sale, whereas the top slice 102 will undergo further processing, although it will be up to each user of the present invention as to the disposition of the sectioned top slice 102 and exact weight bottom piece 104, and such final use of these is beyond the purview of this disclosure.
As the meat product 100 with the separated top slice 102 reaches the end of main conveyor belt 14′, the separator plate 24, which extends rearwards from the cutting blade 20′ to generally adjacent the rear end of upper conveyor belt 16′, separates the top slice 102 and bottom piece 104 of meat product 100 with the upper pressing conveyor belt 16′ engaging and moving top slice 102 forwards within the exact weight meat cutting device 10′ and the main conveyor belt 14′ engaging and moving the bottom piece 104 forwards within the exact weight meat cutting device 101. In the preferred embodiment shown in
The positioning of the rear conveyor belt 36 is important in that the movement of the bottom piece 104 downwards provides space for the positioning of top slice conveyor belt 30, which is positioned rearwards of main conveyor belt 14′ with a forward portion thereof directly underneath the rearward end of the separator plate 24. As the forward portion of the top slice 102 reaches the end of separator plate 24, as shown in
It is to be understood that numerous additions, substitutions, and modifications may be made to the exact weight meat cutting device 10 of the present invention which fall within the intended broad scope of the above description. For example, the size, shape, and construction materials used in connection with the exact weight meat cutting device 10 may be modified or changed so long as the intended functionality of the various elements is maintained. Furthermore, the programming of computing device 80 may be modified or changed so long as the intended functional features of obtaining the height, length, and width of the meat product 100 are maintained, the computing device 80 then operative to produce a volume measurement for the meat product 100 and determine the precise cutting location on the meat product 100 at which cutting blade 22 is to be applied to produce the predetermined bottom piece 104 weight. Finally, it should be noted that the exact type and positioning of laser displacement sensors 54a and 54b is critical to the present invention only in that each of the laser displacement sensors 54a and 54b must be capable of determining the exact distance between itself and a solid object passing in front of the laser displacement sensors 54a and 54b and permitting sufficient time for the computing device 80 to calculate the correct cutting location and move the cutting blade assembly 20 to the proper height for cutting blade 22 via server motor 21.
There has therefore been shown and described an exact weight meat cutting device 10 which accomplishes at least all of its intended objectives.
This application claims priority based on a provisional patent, specifically on the Provisional Patent Application Ser. No. 60/647,147 filed Jan. 26, 2005.
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 60647147 | Jan 2005 | US |
