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Ultrasound in the bakery

Innovative machine for cutting cake

A cautious index finger runs along the steel blade, just to check. Not at all as sharp as one might have thought. Yet the 30-centimetre-long knife cuts cake cleanly, without cracked edges, thirty times a minute. The machinery made by BAKON food equipment in Goes, a town in the Dutch region of Seeland, is highly automated and equipped with Lenze technology. The company supplies machines to the baking industry worldwide.

The secret of this particular cutting machine for tray-baked cake is ultrasound, which makes the blade vibrate at 20,000 oscillations per second.

Today a client from the UK is visiting BAKON. He has brought his own chocolate and cinnamon cake along for a test cut. A conveyor belt brings the cake to the correct cutting position.

The baking tray halts beneath the ultrasound knife. It is aligned precisely and fixed in place during cutting. The blade is mounted on a servo drive bridge above the conveyor belt. The servo drive adjusts the blade, bringing it to each cutting position and enabling the cake to be divided up however you want. Simply enter the required cake measurement into a touchscreen display.

After cutting, the conveyor belt transports the baking tray and cut cake out of the machine. Finished. "Why do you use Lenze?" Without pausing long to think, Ronald Gijssel, Technical Director at BAKON, lists several reasons: longstanding partnership, good products, worldwide service. And why do large-scale bakeries buy their machines from BAKON? "Production in conventional bakeries and in food factories is becoming more and more automated. Added to that, no human being can cut a cake as quickly and precisely as our ultrasound machine," explains Gijssel. A fact which the British client is unable to deny. He orders the machine.