For product developers and corporate engineers, traveling from plant to plant can get old quickly — especially if they’re hauling essential equipment that needs to be shipped in advance or checked as baggage along the way. However, Reading Thermal, Sinking Spring, PA, will roll out a compact R&D oven profiling kit in a 24-in. carry-on case with retractable pull handle and wheels at interpack 2011, to be held May 12-18 in Düsseldorf, Germany.

The Scorpion 2 R&D Smart Sensor is the key component to the kit, according to Richard Starke, direc-tor/general manager, Reading Thermal. Specifically, the multi-element sensor can measure temperature, airflow, heat flux and product core temperature. The kit also can come with an optional humidity sensor to provide measurement of a fifth key baking parameter.


Baking and snack engineers and R&D personnel can get a complete set of oven profiles with two passes of the sensor through the oven, Mr. Starke noted. Typically, he added, collecting this data using individual sensors would require five passes through the oven.

“The R&D Profiling Kit targets the traveling R&D or corporate engineer who needs the ability to easily travel with equipment and quickly profile an oven,” Mr. Starke said. “This person is interested in benchmarking an oven for R&D purposes, product development, product transfer and oven matching across the company’s bak-ing platforms. This person is not interested in studying side-to-side temperature or airflow variation, which would require individual, much larger temperature and air velocity sensor arrays matching the conveyor width. This type of detailed profiling is left to the plant personnel.”