This will
probably only mean something to engineers,
but it shows that not every new idea is a
step forward. Collating products for
packaging was very labour intensive and we
were constantly attempting to do this job
automatically. Kup Kakes were a small
round cake with fondant icing on the top,
although at the time they were known as
Cup Cakes. Vibratory units had hitherto
been used extensively for sugar and flour
feeding and the proposal was to use a
vibratory unit in an attempt to convey the
cake to a collection point, a distance of
about three feet. I had strapped a
vibratory unit under the base plate. In
the test the product moved steadily along,
as intended, under the influence of the
vibratory unit until it reached the far
end of the base plate where I had fitted a
side wall upstand to prevent the cake from
falling onto the floor. On touching the
side wall the Kup Kake disintegrated into
hundreds of pieces. It was back to the
drawing board!
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