Processing equipment is needed in any industry that takes raw materials and coverts them into useable products. This type of equipment is common in factories throughout the country, especially in the food and grain industries. These machines are outfitted for many purposes, including separating, shaping, organizing, and packaging various food products. Each device represents a feat of engineering that combines simple physical principles with speed and efficiency.
In the milling industry, the goal is to render grains edible after they have been brought in from the fields. Processing equipment in this context has to first feed the grains into machines for a series of preparations. During these processes, various types of milling equipment remove undesirable materials, separate the parts of the grains, funnel them to different areas, grind them down, and package them.
Much focus is placed on quality control during the milling process. Removing inedible parts of the plant and trace amounts of metal are essential for safety and product quality. Several machines are typically employed to handle these tasks. Scalperators and sifters take the grain stream and run it through a wire mesh. This mesh is sized so that anything larger than the grain is caught by the mesh and separated from the product. The seeds pass through the mesh unhindered.
Another important function of processing equipment is length and width grading. Devices that perform these tasks ensure that oversized or undersized grains don’t make it into the final product by separating them out with indented discs or meshes.
Once this has been done, the grains must be thoroughly cleaned before they can be ground down into flour. Agribusinesses prefer to do this with air instead of water, because exposing the grains to liquid can cause them to spoil prematurely. Aspirators are employed to remove loose hulls, straw, and fibers that may contaminate the product. These machines stream a constant jet of air across the grain that is only strong enough to remove undesirable debris. It does not affect the grains themselves.
Once the grains are clean and ready to be converted into flour, they are sent to processing equipment that separates and pulverizes. The grain is composed of three parts – the bran (or seed coating), the endosperm (or starchy filler that accounts for 80 percent of the seed), and the germ (or the plant embryo).
White flour is produced using only the endosperm, while whole wheat flour is created with all of the seeds parts. In most factories, the grains are fed into break rollers that spin at high velocities. This causes the three parts of the seed to come apart. The bran, germ, and intermediate endosperm are removed as the bulk of endosperm is ground into flour.
Unifine milling machines are relatively new devices that pulverize the entire seed at once. This piece of processing equipment does this by contacting the seeds against a high-speed flywheel. Unlike roller separators, which create white and whole wheat flour separately, a unifine machine produces extremely smooth and uniformly textured whole wheat flour.