Laser food control systems_

The Q-volume series of measurement systems originated as smart auxiliary sensors for assisted cutting machinery used in the food production sector, and are designed and built in-house by the Q-Tech group as laser food control systems. In particular, the Q-volume systems allow important benefits to be attained in all those product cutting and/or portioning situations that require the measurement of three-dimensional volumes and real-time calculations of appropriate performance figures. These operations, highly intensive computationally, can in fact not be performed inside normal automation and control machinery, but can instead be easily delegated to and performed by the Q-volume measurement systems. Some typical utilisation scenarios of these laser food control systems consist of cheese and/or salami and cold pork meat fixed weight portioning machinery, in which the requirement to guarantee a fixed weight product portioning demands an extremely accurate control of the portioning process. However, this accuracy cannot be achieved without an appropriate automatic cutting compensation based on any geometric dissymmetries of the incoming material. The impossibility to guarantee a proper compensation of these volumetric dissymmetries requires that greater margins of tolerance be adopted when executing the portioning, with a significant waste of raw material and the result of producing a higher quantity of scrap material.

The Q-Tech group has specially developed and designed special processing algorithms for the Q-volume laser food control systems. They allow real-time geo-referencing to be carried out on measurement data coming from multiple sensors. These algorithms, together with the high dynamics measurement technology built into the measurement sensors of the Q-volume systems, allow the three-dimensional geometry of products moving along conveyor belts or on rotary tables to be rebuilt with millimetric accuracy, regardless of the colour or surface finish of the material. Lastly, the automatic calculation procedures developed for the Q-volume system allow the angular or linear volumetric density of the measured product to be determined in real time and then allow information much simpler to manage than the massive quantities of three-dimensional data coming from the sensors to be transmitted to the machine controller. Although easy to manage, the information collected this way is exceptionally precious for performing all necessary adjustments and compensations in the control logics of the cutting blades. Numerous configuration options of the laser food control systems are available to meet many different measurement requirements. Don’t hesitate to contact our technical support for more information or for customised configurations based on your specific needs.