The compact food dispenser “Filler Type Disc” from Holmatec Maschinenbau portions liquid to pasty products such as custard or jam precisely and safely. In addition, the servo-motor-driven system is more energy-efficient than pneumatic or hydraulic ones.

Confectionery is often offered in small units and therefore needs to be portioned all the more precisely. However, the sensitive valves of corresponding food dispensing units in particular are very susceptible to errors, so that quality losses and production delays can easi-ly occur. Thus, Holmatec Maschinenbau has reduced the wearing parts in its “Filler Type Disc” to a single control disc that supplies up to twelve filling points with liquid to pasty products.

If, for example, one wants to portion the dough for tartelettes as well as the associated filling – jam or custard, for example – it becomes clear that the temperature, consistency and composition of the filling products in the confectionery and baked goods sector vary greatly. In addition, the high hygiene standards require frequent and thorough cleaning cycles. In particular, the numerous more sensitive system parts such as valves are subjected to heavy stress. As a rule, each filling point is regulated by its own valve, which in turn has to be disassembled for each cleaning cycle. For this reason, Holmatec has significantly reduced both the number of wearing parts and the amount of cleaning required for its “Filler Type Disc”, which is designed for liquid to pasty products of up to 90 °C.

“Regardless of whether I want to fill six, eight, ten or twelve cavities: With our dispensing system, the medium is sucked in and discharged via a single valve from the storage tank, which holds around 300 litres and is equipped with an agitator, in order to feed it to the respective filling points,” explains Heribert Große-Rechtien, Managing Director of Holmatec. “The control disc of the valve represents the core of the patented technology.” It can be removed within only about 3 min, so that the complete cleaning of the filling system, as required for the daily hygiene routine or also for a product change, takes a total of only 10 min of working time of a single person.

To ensure flawless and reliable operation, the entire system is servomotor-driven. Since the strengths of this drive lie in short and fast cycles, it operates more energy-efficiently in the compact food dispensing unit than pneumatic or hydraulic systems. Added to this is the higher degree of precision that the electric drive can provide.

In combination with the appropriate suction tube diameter, which is matched to the respective media and the filling quantity of the application, the machine achieves a very high dispensing accuracy. For example, when filling 150 g units – dough, jam, choco-late or custard, for example – the difference is only 1 g, while for larger portions, such as applesauce in jars of 500 g each, it is around 2 g. “Since the filling accuracy is higher with a smaller diameter, the following applies to the design of the optimal system: The suction tubes must be as large as necessary but as small as possible,” notes Heribert Große-Rechtien.