The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
May. 15, 1990
Filed:
Sep. 02, 1988
Fred J Cimperman, Castro Valley, CA (US);
Ashlock Company, San Leandro, CA (US);
Abstract
A method and apparatus for pitting olives and then slicing the pitted olives. In a preferred embodiment, each olive is carried in a cup positioned between a coring knife and a pitting knife in a manner so that the longitudinal axes of the cup and the knives coincide. As the cup and knives rotate around a drive shaft along parallel circular paths, a system of cams extends and retracts the knives relative to the cup, in order to pit the olive. After the pitting operation, the cup (containing a pitted olive) continues to rotate along its circular path past a set of slicing knives or water jet cutters. The slicing elements are oriented substantially parallel to the plane of the cup's circular path, so that the slicing elements will sever the olive cleanly into slices as the cup translates past them. In the inventive method and apparatus, both the pitting and slicing operations are performed on each olive while the olive is held in a known orientation. The known orientation is not changed between the two operations, in order to enhance the uniformity of the resulting olive slices. The invention produces clean slices and reduces the amount of olive material destroyed during the slicing operation.