An accurate and consistent divider is essential to crafting a quality final product and is even more important for bakers now as they grapple with rising ingredient costs and stringent labeling rules. 

“For bakers, now with money getting tight and ingredients going up, cost control is even more important than it was in the past,” said Ken Hagedorn, vice president, bakery sector, Handtmann. “If you’re selling a 1-lb product and produce a 1.25-lb portion to be safe, you’re throwing the nutrition level off and giving away more than needed when real precision accuracy is available.” 

Handtmann dividers with vane cell product movement offer a high level of weight accuracy compared to traditional pocket dividers, Hagedorn said. 

“A lot of pizza manufacturers are using standard pocket dividers, and when they go to this type of system, they normally reach the quality they want but they do it faster and more accurately,” he explained. “On a 16-oz dough piece, we may be plus or minus a gram, and you’re not going to find dividers that are that accurate. That’s a huge saving, especially when you’re pumping out the numbers.” 

Rheon’s stress-free dividers cut each dough piece by weight, adjusting on the fly as dough conditions change.

“This ensures that no matter how the floor time or the plant’s ambient temperature changes, you still get the correct weight,” John Giacoio, vice president of sales, Rheon USA.

Mario Hernandez, regional sales manager, Rondo North America, noted the company’s high-speed dividers come with software that maintains weight structure and accuracy. The dividers also offer a high level of flexibility and can handle weight ranges between 16 and 1,750 grams. 

New technology is also enabling dividers to quickly adjust to changing dough conditions while simultaneously saving on labor. 

“A number of companies offer checkweighing equipment that provides feedback loop control to a divider that eliminates manual spot doughball weight checking and can produce instantaneous trending results,” said Jerry Murphy, vice president of sales, Gemini Bakery Equipment. 

John McIsaac, vice president of strategic business development at Reiser, echoed this sentiment, noting Reiser has focused on taking the human element out of divider adjustment. 

“Our VPC 715 checkweigher automatically adjusts the divider weights as the dough density changes,” he explained. “It also records and easily exports the data for production analysis.”

And AMF’s new Gram-Saver will automatically weigh dough balls up to 10 times a minute with no operator involvement or dough loss.

“The checkweigher algorithm will send adjustments to the divider to automatically maintain scaling weights at the standard set points,” said Bruce Campbell, vice president of dough processing technologies, AMF Bakery Systems. “AMF Flex also uses new sensors for items like manifold pressure and dough belt temperatures to ensure the system is running within process specifications.”

HMI panels have also become standard on many dividers, including WP Bakery Group’s dividers, to ensure easy adjustments of the divider when needed, said Nate McDermott, director of customer service and technical sales for WP Bakery Group USA.

Hagedorn added that another often-overlooked aspect of dividing that diminishes accuracy is letting the hopper get too empty. 

“There’s a certain amount of pressure when you have a full hopper or a hopper with barely anything in it, so your dough is going to be completely different,” he explained. “One of the big mistakes people make is they tend to over-fill the hopper until capacity, and they won’t pull another dough until it’s almost completely to the bottom, and that can affect the accuracy.”

This article is an excerpt from the December 2023 issue of Baking & Snack. To read the entire feature on Dividing, click here.