Chocolate coating machines enable you to turn ordinary foods into delicious chocolate candies while saving labor and increasing your return on investment.
This article describes the benefits, types, and working principles of chocolate coating machines.
Why do you need a chocolate coating machine?
The chocolate coating helps mask the smell and taste of certain foods, adds flavor to lighter foods, helps make products more palatable, increases product durability/shelf life, and improves product structure and texture. It also helps to enhance your brand image while increasing product sales. These are enough reasons to want to add a chocolate coating to your manufacturing and be able to stay ahead of the competition.
Whatever the reason, the chocolate coating is a trend that is taking the food industry by storm.
Here are some important benefits of chocolate coating machines.
▸ Save on labor costs, as they are mostly run automatically
▸ Ensure you have a complete product with a perfect surface
▸ allow for better control and product consistency
▸ Helps increase production levels and yields
▸ Provides more consistent coating results compared to manual dipping
▸ Allows for more efficient use of materials
▸ Significantly reduces production costs
So this machine is a worthwhile investment for your business.
Components of the chocolate coating machine
▸ Electronic speed control; for optimizing the coating of different types and sizes of products
▸ Temperature regulator; allows easy and fast temperature adjustment to suit the desired process
▸ HMI control panel; user-friendly HMI control panel allows easy and seamless operation of the chocolate coater
▸ Feed tank; this is where you introduce the product that needs to be coated. Depending on the type of machine, the feed tank can include wire mesh racks or containers for holding the product.
▸ Coating pump; the main function of the coating pump is to facilitate the flow of liquid chocolate to the product to be coated.
▸ Cooling tunnel; for fully integrated systems, the cooling tunnel allows for easy, fast, and proper cooling and curing of the chocolate coating on the product
▸ Conveyor belt; again, this is only equipped with the fully integrated line model. Its function is to transfer the product from the coating area to the cooling tunnel.
▸ Melting tank; this is a stainless steel tank used to feed and melt the chocolate into liquid chocolate for coating
How the chocolate coating machine works
The following are the stages involved in a complete chocolate coating machine line.
Step 1: Chocolate melting
The first step of the coating process is to melt the chocolate in a tempering system.
As you know, the tempering system is connected to the coating machine.
This helps to facilitate a quick and easy transfer of the liquid chocolate to the coating stage.
Step 2: Coating
After melting the chocolate, you will need to place the product to be coated on the machine's feed belt, which can be a wire mesh frame or container.
The feed belt will then transport the item through the machine's bottom bed to the coating area.
Here, the product is conveyed to the machine's coating pump, creating a continuous waterfall of chocolate that covers the product.
Note that the coating pump performs the actual coating of the items.
Thus, the product immediately passes under the coating pump and the wireframe vibrates, ensuring that the chocolate is evenly coated on the bottom item.
The blower in the machine performs a similar function to ensure that the coating does not accumulate on the top of the product.
This is a common problem in large flat products such as cakes.
Any chocolate that is not left on the product is expelled through the wire mesh frame.
Some machines may circulate unused chocolate back into the tempering system to avoid waste.
Others, especially more advanced models, will be equipped with a tail cutter for removing the chocolate tail left by the paint applicator.
Step 3: Cooling
In this step, the wire rack with the coated product moves through the primary conveyor.
The conveyor then transports the product to the cooling channel where the product cools and the chocolate coating solidifies.
Please note that the cooling area of the wrapped wire is usually a long insulation tunnel kept at a constant low temperature.
This is critical to the outcome of the coated product.
If your machine does not have a cooling tunnel, you will need to manually transfer the coated product to the cooling system for cooling.
Step 4: Packaging
Your product is now ready, fully coated, and cooled.
The next and final step is to sort the product for uneven or incorrect coatings.
Remove any products that are not properly coated or that may have been damaged during the coating process.
The rest is now ready for packaging and distribution/shipping/transportation.
Types of chocolate coating machines
Chocolate Coating Pan Machine
The chocolate coating pan machine is more like a traditional technical machine for coating products by the pan method.
It consists of an oval stainless steel pan mounted on top of the machine's gearbox shaft.
An electric motor drives the shaft during operation.
Although this is an old technology, most pans today can control temperature and airflow.
This helps give you/the operator complete control over the coating process.
Some models are even equipped with an automatic coating system that evenly distributes the chocolate during the initial coating process.
Chocolate panning machines are inexpensive.
Mini Chocolate Coating Machine
If you can't match the price of a high-quality, high-volume coating line, a mini-coater can be an alternative.
This machine is perfect for small-scale production environments that require the highest quality coating.
The mini coater will fit your size and budget, offering a combination of built-in flexibility, speed, and high-quality production.
In addition to being inexpensive, mini paint sprayers feature a small, compact design that is often light and portable.
The small size and weight also make these machines easy to disassemble for cleaning and maintenance.
Automatic Chocolate Coating Machines
Automatic chocolate coating machines are the most common machines used for large-scale chocolate coating applications.
These machines include fully automatic (usually programmable) pre-set processing parameters at the push of a button.
Automatic coating pumps as well as speed and temperature controls work together to produce the highest quality chocolate coating results.
Automatic coating machine models also have the advantage of a fully automated processing line that can be connected to an exit belt or cooling tunnel.
They are also easy to clean and maintain.
In addition, all parameters of the fully automatic chocolate coating machine can be set on the touch screen control panel, with or without automatic temperature regulation.
Nut Chocolate Coating Machine
The nut chocolate coating machine is used to wrap liquid chocolate around a variety of dried nuts. With this machine, you can wrap macadamia nuts, peanuts, almonds, pistachios, cashews, walnuts, and any other nuts.
The machines follow the same working principles as other chocolate coating machines to ensure the highest quality coating results.
In addition, they can appear as a fully integrated processing line or not.
Usage of the chocolate coating machine
The main function of a chocolate coating machine is to coat items with a uniform layer of chocolate.
It is mainly used in the food manufacturing and processing industry to cover candies, nuts, cookies, dried fruits, cakes, etc.
The machine is also used in the pharmaceutical industry for coating pills, tablets, and ingots to mask their taste and odor.
If you still have questions or concerns about the chocolate coating machine, please feel free to contact us and we will be happy to assist you.
