GB1128776A - Improvements relating to confections - Google Patents

Abstract

1,128,776. Endless conveyers. ESKIMO PIE CORP. 24 Nov., 1965, No. 49982/65. Heading B8A. [Also in Division A2] In a method and apparatus for completely coating confections, particularly frozen bars of ice-cream, with a molten enrobing substance such as chocolate, the confections 20 are fed in succession, by a shoot or travelling belt 26 and through fixed guides, between the two opposed, spiked, vertical flights of a conveyer 27 comprising two endless, flexible, travelling belts 38 and 39 each carrying a plurality of thin, sharp-pointed spikes 40, on which the confections are impaled. The belts 38 and 39 are respectively supported by pulleys 46, 45, 44, 43, 42 and 51, 50, 49, 48, 47; the pulleys 46, 51 and 42, 47 being slightly smaller, in diameter, than the intervening pulleys, which are uniform diameter, so that the portions of the opposed flights supported by the intervening pulleys are substantially parallel, and the opposed flights diverge where they receive the uncoated confections, and where they discharge the coated confections 35, through fixed guides 37 (which remove coated confections from the spikes) on to a travelling, discharging belt 36. Each impaled confection 20 is thus conveyed through sprays or curtains of the molten enrobing substance issuing, in at least two different directions, from a spraying device 28, and then through blasts of air issuing from nozzles 30 and 31, which blasts remove excess enrobing substance from each confection, e.g. into a tank beneath the conveyer 27, and smooth the coating substance around each confection into a layer of uniform thickness. The coated confections may then be conveyed under a dispenser 33, from which crumbs of baked pastry or confectionary, candy or edible nuts are dispensed on to the upper surface of each coated confection before the coating thereon has hardened or set. Parts of the guides 37 may be heated, or heated smoothing irons may be attached to the inner sides of the guides 37, or positioned immediately thereafter, to obliterate punctured holes left in the coating.