Bowl cutters and emulsifiers: a buyer’s guide to cutting and emulsification machines

Both are cutting and emulsification machines, and the two can also work together: the cutter builds the recipe, and the emulsifier gives the final fine texture at line speed. The sections below explain how to decide which one your products need, and at what size.

The three machines overlap at the edges, which is why buyers searching for “cutter grinders” or “grinders and cutters” often end up comparing all of them. The table sets out what each one actually does to the product, in general terms; the machines listed under it are the ones in our catalogue.

If your products are minced rather than emulsified, the meat mixer grinder guide covers that side of the range. A bowl cutter is the machine to look at once a recipe needs a batter, a fine paste or a controlled coarse chop, and the emulsifier comes into the picture when that batter has to be produced continuously.

Every bowl cutter in the catalogue follows the same layout, whatever its size. The drawing shows it from above, with the four parts that decide how it cuts and how easy it is to live with.

Two speeds do the work: how fast the knives spin, and how fast the bowl turns. Together with the number of bowl turns, they set how many times each piece of product meets a knife, and so how fine the result is.

An inline emulsifier has no bowl at all. In the KK 144 C the product is drawn down through a stack of hole and cutting plates; Seydelmann’s data sheet, linked from the machine page, describes the plates running very close together without touching, and a cutting set of 3, 5 or 7 pieces.

Bowl content is the volume of the bowl in litres. It is not the weight of a batch: how much product a recipe can put in depends on what is being cut, how much ice it carries and how it moves in the bowl, so ask for the working batch for your own recipe before comparing machines on litres alone.

The four bowl cutters in the catalogue cover a wide spread. The K40 and K 60 are loaded by hand, according to their data. The Bi-Cut K 552 AC-8 lists BW 200 and BW 300 as its loading options, so plan the floor space and bin handling around the cutter as well as the machine itself.

Knife speed decides how hard each cut is; bowl speed decides how often the product comes back to the knives. A drive that lets you set the two separately gives more control over texture and temperature, and a reverse speed lets the knives mix without cutting, which is useful when the last ingredients go in.

The published speed figures in the catalogue are counts of speeds, not revolutions per minute. Ask for the speed table of the drive you are quoted, and compare machines on the same drive.

Knives are a wear part. A dull or damaged knife tears instead of cutting, warms the batter and can unbalance the head, so keep spare sets, check them at every clean and send them for regrinding on a schedule; our spare parts team offers a specialist sharpening service.

Cutting heats the product. In a fine emulsion, heat is the thing to watch: the fat has to stay bound in the batter, and a batter that runs too warm can break and release fat or jelly when it is cooked. That is why producers add ice or chilled water during the cut and keep an eye on the product temperature throughout.

The published operating ranges differ by model, and they are worth checking against your raw material before you buy.

Temperature limits for the K 60 are not in its catalogue data. Whatever the model, ask how product temperature is measured and whether the cutter can be set to stop at a target temperature, so batches finish the same way whoever is running the shift.

Start with the products and the batch you make most often, not the largest one. A cutter that is too big for everyday batches may not cut evenly when it is only part-filled, and one that is too small has your team loading and unloading all day. The four groups below match the machines in the catalogue to the kinds of production they suit.

Every figure in the table is taken from the machine’s own catalogue entry. Where a figure is not published, the table says so rather than estimating it.

The stages below show an illustrative layout for frankfurts, polony and other cooked emulsion sausage. It is a way to think about where each machine type fits, not a line we have supplied or a promise that particular machines will work together; every line is specified around the product.

Meat is usually ground coarse first, then cut to a batter in the bowl cutter with ice, salt, fat and seasoning. Where output has to be continuous, the batter or pre-ground mix can be finished in the KK 144 C: its data sheet calls it especially suitable for the final emulsification of pre-ground material. From there the batter goes to the filler.

A bowl cutter is washed down after every shift and between recipes that must not mix, and the knife head, hood and bowl are where product hides. The published descriptions of the K40 and the Bi-Cut K 552 AC-8 describe the same construction for wash-down.

Before you order, ask to see the knives taken off and refitted and the hood and bowl cleaned, and time it. That routine, repeated every day, matters as much as the cutting figures.

The cutters and the emulsifier appear on these product pages in the catalogue, alongside the other machines matched to each product. The sausage industry page brings the whole range for sausage production together.

Vemag Australia is the official Seydelmann distributor for Australia and New Zealand, with offices at Redland Bay in Queensland and Rosedale in Auckland. Quotations are put together around your production, whether that is one table cutter or a complete line.