During the biscuit-producing processes, how to transfer the heavy dough is an important part of the biscuit line design. Before the dough is cut into raw biscuits by the forming systems, the dough needs to be fed overcoming the distance and spacing between the mixers and the forming systems. Mixers can be horizontal or vertical mixers with movable dough barrels. In most cases, the dough is transferred from movable dough barrels to the dough transfer system. Otherwise, many horizontal mixers nowadays have tipping angles of over 100 degrees, which are convenient for dough discharging into a dough transfer system on the below layer or a dough trolley.

Dough bucket elevator

When the dough is ready for sheeting or laminating on a forming system, a dough bucket elevator may be used to tip the bulk dough into the hopper of the sheeter. This could be the simplest way to feed a 3-4 rolls sheeter on a single floor layout. However, the metal detector can’t be equipped on any part of the dough bucket elevator to avoid any metal delivered.

Dough feed conveyor with a metal detector

For crackers and hard dough biscuits, the bulk dough can also be tipped hydraulic tilting machine into the hopper of a two-roll sheeter. Then it may be conveyed to the sheeter of the biscuit forming system. This time the conveyor usually has a metal detector.

Slice feeding machine

In another way, the transfer system uses a slice feeding machine. The bulk dough is tipped into a movable dough barrel or a dough trolley for horizontal mixers(which has the same function as the movable dough barrel). After transferring the bulk dough is tipped by a hydraulic tilting machine into the slice feeding machine. The base of the machine is a conveyor which will take the dough forward where it is sliced into short pieces by a vertical guillotine. The machine is preset to operate intermittently to slice the dough as required each time. The dough pieces are conveyed to the laminator or sheeter of the biscuit forming system.

               

Dough slicing

               

Slice feeding machine

Dough feeder for rotary machine

For soft biscuits, it is important that the dough pieces should be fed evenly to the rotary machine to ensure accuracy in the weights of the dough pieces. The bulk dough may be conveyed by a soft dough overhead conveyor toward a soft dough crumbler, which will crumble the dough into small and loose pieces before transferring it to a rotary molder.

If you find this article interesting, please follow our Facebook▶https://www.facebook.com/biscuitequipment    We will share more fun things about biscuits both on our website and Facebook.