Drive mechanism for dough shaping apparatus

Abstract

A mechanism for controllably driving a plunger in a dough forming apparatus of the type that has a chamber in which the plunger resides to move dough in incremental steps toward one end of the chamber. Spanning the one end of the chamber is a plurality of parallely spaced apart elongate members, the spacing between the elongate members corresponding to the thickness of a french fry shaped piece, e.g. 1/4 inch. The plunger is advanced by increments of a similar distance, the distance corresponding to the width of the french fry piece and when a plurality of dough bodies protrude through the spaces between the elongate members a single wire cutter is reciprocated across the exterior of the elongate members to sever the protruding bodies thus to form french fry shaped pieces. In order that the pieces possess a square or substantially square cross sectional shape, the mechanism of the invention assures accurate incremental advancement of the plunger as well as affording a quiescent period during which the wire cutter is reciprocated across a transverse plane exterior with the surface of the elongate members. An extremely simple and accurate drive mechanism for assuring constant incremental advancement. A mechanism which in addition to affording constant incremental advance of the plunger provides a quiescent period for transverse dough cutting and affords actuation of the dough cutter during such quiescent period in response to a single driving stroke applied to the mechanism.