SEW-EURODRIVE has worked with Alway for 40 years. The automated system increases efficiency, piercing 8,000 full cheeses per day. SEW-EURODRIVE provides complete bespoke automation package for blue cheese piercing.
Alway.co.uk is a leading manufacturer and supplier of bespoke stainless-steel equipment and machinery and has been providing specialist turnkey engineering solutions since 1985. The firm operates from a state-of-the-art engineering facility in Loughborough, offering a diverse range of customer-focused services and solutions, from sheet metal fabrication to the design and manufacture of complex systems.
One of the complex systems designed by Alway is the HSP9000 cheese piercing solution, the first product of Alway’s HSP (High-Speed Piercer) brand. Cheese piercers are used by Stilton manufacturers to pierce the cheese - a process where long thin metal needles are inserted into the cheese to allow oxygen to activate the Penicillium roqueforti that has been added to the milk, in turn changing texture, adding flavour, and making the familiar blue streaks.
With an aim to create an innovative solution for cheese piercing that maintained product quality and increased efficiency for a leading Stilton manufacturer, Alway turned to SEW-EURODRIVE UK for help with the HSP9000.
Alway had a series of existing cheese piercing models which were all mechanically driven. The push for automation and market demand for new solutions led them to exploring the options for an up-to-date modern system with servo-drives, which they turned to SEW-EURODRIVE to help provide.
The challenge entailed turning the age-old manufacturing process of forming Stilton into an automated operation, ensuring the cheese would remain authentically Stilton by having blue veins radiating from the centre.
SEW-EURODRIVE solution
1. Initial consultation and development of the idea
After Alway came up with the ingenious design concept to achieve everything without manual intervention, SEW explored all suitable products to fit the criteria of the planned system. The hardware needed was identified, and SEW’s applications team was then on hand to help implement the motion control MOVIKIT® software which gives commissioning engineers access to all control functions within a single interface. This shortens startup times considerably by providing configurable automation and motion control functions.
2. Complete automation while retaining authenticity.
Cheese has to be pierced in a certain way to allow it to develop as blue cheese. The solution developed by Alway and SEW-EURODRIVE is entirely automated, fitting with the new industry demand for automation. Although the piercer is automated, it pierces the blue cheese in the same way one would do mechanically or by hand, retaining the cheese’s authenticity.
The HSP9000 pierces 8,000 full cheeses per day, showing incredible efficiency, and its piercing precision reduces waste, as it ensures a uniform distribution of mould cultures every time.
3. Ease for the end user
For the end-customer, the system is more dynamic, efficient, reliable and flexible, resulting in near double the product output per hour due to SEW’s automated solution.
Rather than a mechanical machine on the production line, the fully automated system offers more adaptability than the more traditional production method. Interactive recipes are displayed on the SEW DOP HMI for different products, coupled to the 6 axis SEW MOVI-C MOVIDRIVE® Modular and UHX motion controller. This drives the CMS electric cylinders and CM3C servo geared motors, allowing customers the option to adjust the machine’s settings based on the products that are being produced.
