Bakers Journal

Fortress Technology creates new contaminant detector

July 9, 2018
By Bakers Journal

Interceptor Fortress Technology

Inspecting wet and conductive products has for many years presented bakers with a number of challenges. Fortress Technology’s Interceptor has achieved a new level of sensitivity by conquering “product effect.”

Product effect is a term which describes a false alarm of metal detection in dough or finished baked goods, set off by the presence of salt or trace minerals in the item being scanned. In addition to salt content, baked bread can impact a metal detector’s ability to distinguish between any metal contaminants that may have been introduced during the mixing process, or when it comes out of a warm oven. Because baked goods can react in different ways in the magnetic field of a food inspection metal detector, it can lead to false readings and consequently higher product waste. What’s more, air bubbles and the density of bread loaves will vary, even in the same batch, which pose challenges for x-ray detection.

Originally designed for a bakery production facility, the Interceptor can be deployed on numerous checkpoints on a bakery line, including packing conveyors, pipeline configurations for raw dough, or gravity systems for inspecting raw ingredients, such as milled flour.

Rather than tuning into specific frequencies, the Interceptor splits and simultaneously analyzes the low-frequency and high-frequency signals. This means the metal detector can clearly differentiate between the signal generated by the product as a result of moisture or mineral content and any metal contaminant.

Advertisement

The result is a more reliable and accurate reading regardless of size, shape and orientation of metal particles and an improvement in detection capabilities of up to 100 per cent with stainless steel, especially when inspecting traditionally difficult “wet” products or using metalized film during processing. In laymen’s terms, halving the test sample sphere size to 0.5 mm is the equivalent of picking up a wire length contaminant of 25 mm.  

For ease of use, the Interceptor learns and recalls the signature of any given product with just one pass. FM Software is integrated, bringing a predictive element to the analysis of signals from the metal detector.

Customers can choose either Wi-Fi or Ethernet connections for easy and accurate data collection. To reduce the risk of human error when manually testing the performance of the detection system, Halo automatic testing can be added.

Being IP69K rated, the Interceptor range is resistant to water ingress and dust, ensuring long-term reliability and performance in heavy processing and wash down environments, especially bakery manufacturing plants.


Print this page

Advertisement

Stories continue below


Related

Tags



Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*