Food Grinding
Often food items, such as certain spices, are too big in size to be used. When this occurs it is necessary to grind the food down to a manageable size.
Food grinding is the process of reducing the size of certain food items by dividing them into smaller pieces. In the grinding process, food items are made smaller by fracturing them. During the fracturing process, various mechanical moving parts within a machine put an extreme amount of stress on the food item. Once the stress level becomes too high, the food item breaks into smaller pieces.
There are many types of food grinding equipment, but all of them fall into two categories--crushers and grinders Crushers are cylinder shaped pieces of metal with rotating cylinders. The metal pieces are spaced wide at the top while becoming increasingly narrower at the bottom. The food material is forced from the top of the crusher down to the narrow end. The food items if forced into smaller and smaller pieces as it travels down the metal pieces. The rotating cylinders help to break up the food items into even smaller particles.
Hammer mills have swinging hammer heads that rotate at high speed inside a metal casing. The food items are crushed between the hammer heads and the casing. The food material continues to be crushed over and over again until its particles are small enough to fit through a screen located at the bottom of the casing.
There are other types of food grinding machines that are less common. These include fixed head mills which work by crushing food material between a fixed casing and a rotating head; plate mills that crush the food between two circular plates; roller mills which crush food as it passes through a series of rollers; and ball mills use natural pebbles to break up food items.
