Apparatus and method for stacking food products

摘要

A conveyor system for assembling and stacking sliced food products (108) is provided. The conveyor system includes an assembly area (200), wherein groups of a predetermined quantity of sliced food products (108) travel from a slicer (104) on a conveyor (110) and are deposited on discrete carrier sheets (112) on a downstream conveyor (126). The assembly area (200) is configured to delay advancement of the carrier sheets (112) on the downstream conveyor (126) until a group of the predetermined quantity is formed. The slicer (104) is configured to calculate the number of slices in each group and determine whether a group is complete. A stacking area (300) of the conveyor system includes a nose conveyor (302) that extends and retracts to deposit each carrier sheet (112) onto a pair of initial supports (304). The initial supports (304) reciprocate away from each other in opposing directions to drop the carrier sheet onto a subsequent level, with the initial supports (304) reciprocating each time a carrier sheet (112) is deposited thereon.