Sometimes established, tried and true technology is the best solution for portioning products, but other times new, innovative, and advanced technologies can offer the best flexibility and accuracy, and that’s how we ended up designing a series of robotic cake cutting machines. It might sound like something straight out of a Transformers movie, and they certainly aren’t for every bakery, but using advanced robotic technology in cake cutting machines offers the most precision, flexibility, and customization in the baked goods portioning world.
ROBOTIC CAKE CUTTING VIDEO
The RPS Series ultrasonic robotic cake cutting machines incorporate a robotic arm, titanium ultrasonic slicing blade, advanced PLC controls, and options for single or dual cutting stations, or, for large production facilities, an inline automated conveyor system. Add an automatic ultrasonic blade cleaner and you have a robotic cake cutting machine with the most innovative technologies available to portion round or sheet cakes, rolls, loaves, breads, and more.
The RPS Series machines use a single ultrasonic blade mounted to a robotic arm. For production facilities cutting a high volume of just one or two unique products it could be slower to use a robot unit versus a multi-blade machine from the ACCUSONIC™ line, but what robotic machines may lack in speed, they make up for in portion size and shape flexibility.
Having a single blade and an infinite number of portioning layouts means that products like the half sheet cakes in a cardboard bake-in-the-box pictured above can be sliced on the same machine that can cut full sheets, rounds, rolls, and more. The robotic arm is programmed to place the blade just inside the cardboard box, making perfect portions every time without needing to remove the product from the holder. To switch between dessert products, the operator simply changes the product holder and the cut pattern recipe in the computer and the machine is ready to slice.
RPS SERIES
The RPS Series consists of our robotic cake cutting solutions.
RPS-100S – Single product holder – Up to 6 products per minute – More info
RPS-100D – Dual product holder – Up to 6 products per minute – More info
RPS-100C – Conveyor belt – Up to 12 products per minute – More info
If you are portioning only round cakes, or a large volume of sheet products, you may want to consider an ACCUSONIC™ machine, but, if you need to slice both round and sheet products, or have a wide variety of different and unique cut patterns, including squares, triangles, and more, then the RPS robotic cake cutting machines may be right for you.
For more interesting ways that robots are changing the way we eat, watch this short film from WIRED: How Food-Bots Are Changing How We Eat | Robots & Us | WIRED
ULTRASONIC SLICING
For those not familiar with ultrasonic slicing technology, this option is often employed to portion products that are warm, ambient, sticky, delicate, or when products have inclusions such as nuts, raisins, or morsels. An ultrasonic system vibrates a finely tuned titanium blade at 20,000Hz, so fast that resistance is removed and the blade slides effortlessly through the product without crushing the top, dragging through layers or inclusions, or allowing the product to stick to the blade. This improves the cut quality and can increase the production efficiency by removing the need to clean the blade between each slice or each cutting cycle.
For products that are extra delicate or sticky, leaving some residue on the blade, an automatic blade cleaning system is used to clean the titanium blade automatically between cycles, at manual intervals, or on a programmable schedule.
For dessert products that do not require an ultrasonic blade to cleanly slice portions we typically recommend a machine from our CS or ACCUSLICE™ lines that use stainless steel blades. These machines are often more simple, less of an investment, and ideal for frozen, chilled, or dense products.
If you have more questions about robotic cake cutting machines, or want to schedule a demonstration, contact a FoodTools representative today!