3D Printing

After some time I finally got myself a 3D printer!

The Creality Ender 3 Pro.

This is where I will share my journey with this brilliant new hobby.

1100 Pass Through

700 Pass Through

Mini Pass Through

1100 Pass Through

700 Pass Through

Mini Pass Through

The Issue

The image you can see shows the issue that was happening.

The users were cooking large batches of Southern Fried Chicken and instead of loading them as a single layer, they were piling the chicken pieces up into large mounds.

In some cases, the mounds were so large that the bottom piece were being crushed and in worse situations, the bottom pieces were left in there having new batches of chicken placed directly on top of them leading to extended periods of holding time past the safe limit.

The Issue

The image you can see shows the issue that was happening.

The users were cooking large batches of Southern Fried Chicken and instead of loading them as a single layer, they were piling the chicken pieces up into large mounds.

The Solution

By using a system called ‘FIFO’ (first in first out), the chicken is ‘passed through’ the unit in a controlled manor.

This will make sure that chicken pieces are loaded as single layers, with is important to reduce the possibility of chicken being trapped under new batches.

The single layer of chicken also means that the coating on chicken remains intact, as well as allowing for proper air flow in the unit helping to humidify and warm the chicken to the optimum levels.

The Solution

By using a system called ‘FIFO’ (first in first out), the chicken is ‘passed through’ the unit in a controlled manor.

This will make sure that chicken pieces are loaded as single layers, with is important to reduce the possibility of chicken being trapped under new batches.

The single layer of chicken also means that the coating on chicken remains intact, as well as allowing for proper air flow in the unit helping to humidify and warm the chicken to the optimum levels.

3D Printing

A ‘Multi Stack’ style pass through with temp + humidity control and a small footprint.

The Development Process

The design went through a number of stages before the final configuration was arrived at.

Initially the design was going to be simple and square, but it was decided that to match the rest of the range there would be an angled front, then both sides were angled.

A bagged food chute was added to the top then, as a result of operational testing it was removed.

Once these changed had been finalised the interior air flow was designed to use convection rather than fan assisted airflow.

Timelapse

Here is my first real time-lapse.

Created using a raspberry pi running Octoprint with the plugin Octolapse.

Further details to follow, but I just want to say thank you to Former Lurker for the fantastic information and instruction about how to get this to run with a DSLR saving the files to the SD card and allowing such a great quality time-lapse to be achieved with very minimal effort.

Links to his channel and GitHub to be placed here soon.

Timelapse - Shorter

This is just a shorter version of the longer one.

Humidity Control

Internal temperature and humidity control, for enhanced holding time and superior quality products.

Smaller Footprint

Designed to increase the available internal storage area using the smallest possible footprint.

Easy Clean

Reduced fastenings and neat sheet metal forming allow for panels to be wiped down easily and removable internal parts allow for easy cleaning.

Convection Air Flow

The design eliminates the need for fans, by using a passive system that allows air flow to be generated by placement of the elements and air deflecting elements. This will reduce the possibility of breakdowns and therefor equipment downtime.

Hot air rises up through the middle of the unit, cool air then flows down the sides for it to be heated and humidified continuously.

Final Design

Here are the final design images. These were taken as part of the product photoshoot which I organised and acted as creative director on site at the studio. Along with a break away layered render I produced to display the internal layout for the final design.

Installation Examples

Many different configurations of the Fast Serv system have been implemented, here are a few examples.