It's a long way from petroleum industry test and measurement equipment to putting sauce and toppings on pizza. But Quantum Technical Services of Frankfort, Illinois can do both. Quantum was custom designing and manufacturing high-precision test and measurement equipment for the petroleum industry since 1991. They continued developing their expertise in many fields of automated equipment and then turned their experience and focus toward the food industry by providing high quality automated equipment to apply sauce and toppings to pizza pies. These sauce and topping systems are now 85 percent of Quantum's business.

With pizza being the popular food that it is, this is big business. Quantum's present product line includes seven conveyorized sauce systems and two conveyorized topping systems. These systems are configured according to volume and size of product. Quantum's customers range from small, local "home town" pizza manufacturers to the country's largest frozen pizza plants. Quantum sauce systems can accommodate pizza crusts as small as five inches and as large as 16 inches at process speeds from five to 210 crusts per minute.

The newest machine in the Quantum line is model #C1203210-12, which addresses the large pizza manufacturers' need for high-volume, precise application of sauce and topping. This system uses Control Technology Corp. rack style controllers to control six axes of motion. The Control Tech color operator interface has a NEMA 4x adapter for clear concise operator control while still providing protection from caustic washdown. The #C1203210-12 applies sauce to pizza product (rigid crust or crust supported by corrugated cardboard) from six inches to 12 inches in diameter. These machines use three production lanes and have six sauce applicators to evenly apply sauce to six pizzas at a time while maintaining a sauce-free border. Rate of sauce application is adjustable on this model by entering whatever speed rate is desired up to 210 crusts per minute. The Quantum model #C1203210-12 accepts pizza crusts in random order directly from the bakery. The crusts are arrayed edge to edge across the three lanes on a common flighted stainless steel conveyor chain with two pins per pizza to aid in moving the product through the process. The conveyor and the moving head on this model both are driven by precision servo drive motors.

To work smoothly, this system must account for the weight of each pizza crust, the "pulling" gap between pizzas as they move along the flighted chain, and the position of the trailing edge of the pizza crust. The system controllers are programmed to sense the location of the trailing edge of the pizza crust because this parameter does not vary. Dale Nelson of Quantum explained that "the #C1203210-12 system includes an infeed orientator to adjust the crusts as they are fed into the sauce applicator. This was easy to implement using the CTC Registration feature in the Servo Module. The CTC automation controller controls: the pacing conveyor line speed and gap pull between crusts (1 axis); the orientation conveyor where product is adjusted by advance and retard action to fit properly under the sauce head (3 axes); the flighted chain conveyor (1 axis); and the movement of the sauce head back and forth into position over the center of the pizza crust (1 axis)."

David White, an engineering manager at Quantum Technical Services, said that the model #C1203210-12 is the newest and largest capacity sauce application machine in the Quantum line. Commenting on why Quantum Technical Services prefer CTC controllers for this application, David said, "Primarily because of the ability to program in Quickstep™ and be able to do motion and logic functions and not have to program in ladder logic."

Control Technology Corp. is pleased to be part of Quantum Technical Services' product development.

To see other machines in the Quantum line and their technical specifications, go to their Web site at www.q-t-s.com.