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Burgers

Seventy degrees in the core, and everything else is arrangement

One number on a burger line is fixed by food safety and not by preference. The machine is designed around it and the rest follows.

Why the grill is the simple part

A contact grill closes on both sides at once and roughly halves the cook time, which is the single largest speed gain available on a burger line. The machine is mature, the patents are old and the mechanism is not clever.

What makes it work is measurement. A plate at the right temperature means nothing on its own, because what matters is the temperature in the middle of the meat, and that depends on thickness, starting temperature and how long the patty sat before it went on.

Livsmedelsverket puts minced meat at seventy degrees in the core. That is not our number and it is not adjustable. Everything about the grill station is arranged so that number is reached and can be shown to have been reached.

A clamshell griddle in section with the core temperature curve below Two heated plates are drawn in section, the upper one lowered onto the lower. Nine short lines mark the ridges on each plate and a glowing line runs between them. A violet ellipse between the plates is the patty, with a blinking point at its centre. Below, a blue curve rises through three measured points to a dashed limit line marked seventy degrees, under the words core temperature is the only done. CLOSED 70 C CORE TEMPERATURE IS THE ONLY DONE CONTACT ON BOTH SIDES HALVES THE TIME

Grill

Contact on both sides halves the time

Closing a heated plate onto the second face is the whole trick. It also removes the flip, which is the motion that needs either a person or the most expensive kind of machine.

The cost of that is pressure. A plate that closes too hard presses the juice out and leaves something dry and thin, so the mechanism has to control force and not just position, and that is the part worth reading the record about before anybody builds one.

A stacked burger in section with the gripper above and the tolerance stack beside it Six layers are drawn in section from the top bun down to the bottom bun, each labelled, with the patty drawn heavier than the rest. A measurement down the side reads ninety four millimetres plus or minus six. Above the stack a gripper reaches down with a glowing line to a blinking point, under the words the claw knows position, not pressure. On the right six bars grow taller from left to right under the word stacked. BUN SAUCE PATTY CHEESE SALAD BUN 94 mm +/- 6 THE CLAW KNOWS POSITION, NOT PRESSURE STACKED SIX LAYERS, SIX TOLERANCES
Automation i ett storkök
Trays moving down a line. Every transfer between two of them is a place where position has to be found again.

Assembly

Six layers, six tolerances, one stack

Assembly looks trivial and is where these lines actually fail. Each layer lands with a small error in position and thickness, and the errors do not cancel. Six layers each within three millimetres is not a burger within three millimetres.

A gripper knows where it is and does not know how hard it is holding. That is fine for a bun and wrong for a tomato. Which layers get a claw and which get a different mechanism entirely is the design decision on this station.

The practical answer is usually to reduce the number of layers a machine has to place rather than to buy a better machine. A sauce that goes on with a nozzle instead of a spoon removes a whole station.

The choices

What has to be settled before anything is bought

Three of these four are about the meat rather than the machine, which is the usual proportion.

DecisionWhat it settlesWho decides it
Core temperatureCook time, plate temperature, throughputFood safety rules, not us and not you
Patty thicknessWhether contact grilling is enough on its ownThe recipe, and it is worth fixing early
Number of layersHow many placing stations the line needsThe menu, and this is where the savings are
Sauce methodWhether a station disappears entirelyA nozzle removes work a claw would have had to do

Every layer taken off the menu removes a station, and a station removed is cheaper than a station automated well.

Or write here

Three fields, and a person reads it

Name, an address we can answer to, and what you are trying to build. You get a reference back straight away.

We use this to answer you and, where it fits, to prepare a scope. The lawful basis is steps taken at your own request before a contract. It is stored on our own server in the European Union, never passed to anyone, and deleted after twelve months if it does not become an engagement. The full notice is on the legal page.

A clamshell griddle in section with the core temperature curve below Two heated plates are drawn in section, the upper one lowered onto the lower. Nine short lines mark the ridges on each plate and a glowing line runs between them. A violet ellipse between the plates is the patty, with a blinking point at its centre. Below, a blue curve rises through three measured points to a dashed limit line marked seventy degrees, under the words core temperature is the only done. CLOSED 70 C CORE TEMPERATURE IS THE ONLY DONE CONTACT ON BOTH SIDES HALVES THE TIME

How many covers, and how many layers?

Those two numbers decide most of the build. Tell us both and we will read what exists before drawing anything.

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