White Castle ensures hamburger integrity with hi-tech metal detector

Food & Drug Packaging, Nov, 1998 by William Makely

White Castle, the oldest of the leading American burger restaurants, is committed to absolute product purity. The more than 500 million hamburger patties that pass through its production system in a year are subjected to critical examinations, including metal detection.

Even though new metal detection units were installed on

the packaging line when the company opened its Orleans, Ind., plant in 1996, when newer units were introduced, White Castle was one of the first users.

Supplied by Loma Int'l, the newer IQ series metal detector keeps a detailed log of contaminations, including size of contaminant, time and date of the detection. The IQ's Performance Validation system continually evaluates the system's own performance and the Sensitivity Control is a self-tracking system that automatically tracks changes in product and compensates accordingly.

And, although the IQ is dedicated to standard hamburgers at the Orleans plant, it includes a product learn system that prompts it to ask operators questions via a menu-driven display. Answers enable it to program itself to provide detection of the new product. The system stores detection parameters for up to 100 products in its memory, as well as reject totals for all products inspected. The system is also "Millennium Ready," which means there will be no Y2K (year 2000) problems on January 1, 2000.

White Castle 100% pure beef hamburger patties begin life as a block of cut beef which has been drawn into 40-inch-long sections of the chain's trademark 2.5 x 2.5-inch square cross section. The blocks are indexed three-up through a slicer which cuts them to accurate weight and thickness. The resulting slices are placed on waxed sheets, 15 to a sheet, and fed through the IQ metal detector.

The hamburgers continue down the production line to a stacker where they are placed 24-high (30 dozen) in a corrugated shipper. Rejects trigger a drop-flap conveyor, which deposits unacceptable burgers into a reclaim tub.

The IQ unit, made of stainless steel, features waterproof construction, allowing easy, effective washdown. An optional, more protected head--chosen by White Castle--allows a more aggressive high-pressure washdown. The IQ system at White Castle is not currently networked, but is compatible with most programmable logic controller (PLC) networks through Loma's X-Link protocol, and ready for networking.

Installed in late 1997, the IQ has run parallel to White Castle's Micro units ever since.

"There were three reasons for the change," says Tony McGraw, maintenance supervisor at the Orleans plant. "Sensitivity, easy adjustment and easy washdown. As much as we liked the Micro, the IQ beats it in every category."

For more information from Loma Int'l, call (800) 872-5662 or Circle 581.

In a nutshell

Goal: Improve metal detection performance

How: Install more sensitive, self-validating metal detector

Result: Greater sensitivity, efficiency and adaptation to future growth