Ishida Europe has enhanced its market-leading FLEX-Grader for fresh poultry and meat with the introduction of a new high accuracy weighing platform which allows for more accurate grading and improved Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE).
The Slack Belt weigh bed incorporates a single belt mechanism which eliminates product transfer issues to and from the weigh bed. This creates a more stable weighing environment for even greater accuracy. In addition, the weigh bed features a scraper that removes any product debris, which ensures a more consistent and accurate auto zeroing of the load cell.
Equally important, the Slack Belt’s hygienic construction to IP68 certification is fully protected against water ingress, making it ideal for harsh, high care environments; the belt can also be easily removed for cleaning. A wind shield is provided as standard to ensure protection against environmental factors during the weighing process,
“Working closely with customers is key to understanding their specific challenges, in particular tackling areas of inefficiencies,” explained Ciaran Murphy, Ishida Europe’s Business Manager EMEA – Quality Inspection Control. “For the FLEX-Grader, our focus was to develop a solution that helped to minimise the impact of product giveaway and food wastage, while maintaining hygiene standards.”
The Ishida FLEX-Grader offers a high-speed and accurate solution for the grading of fresh poultry and meat to a variety of different specifications, including specified weight, minimum weight or number per pack. It can also deliver target batching with tolerances and priorities, including product overlapping. An intuitive touch screen remote control ensures ease of set up and changeovers.
The FLEX-Grader features a modular design that is easily integrated into existing processing and packing lines which can be modified and adapted for changing requirements. It can incorporate between four and 32 collection bins in a variety of configurations including single, double and twin line layouts, handling pieces from 100mm to 400mm in length at speeds from 175 to 500 per minute.
As part of Ishida’s ability to supply complete turnkey lines tailored to individual customer requirements, the company also offers a full range of complementary machines including multihead weighers, tray sealers, leak detectors, checkweighers and X-ray inspection systems, with its IX-G2 model specially designed for the detection of low-density contaminants such as bone fragments in chicken fillets.
Ishida’s global network provides full local support for every FLEX-Grader installation to ensure optimum performance. The company’s aftersales service has continued to support customers across the EMEA region throughout the current pandemic using the latest in support technology, such as Augmented Reality for the delivery of remote training and servicing.
