Storage technology for temperatures up to 300 degrees in the fully automatic pizza oven from BistroBox

What was needed: toothed belt axis, energy chain, gear, clevis joint, sliding foils, ball bearings and circlip

Requirements: maintenance-free bearing technology that works for a long time in the self-service area. Temperature tolerance between 3 and 300 °C. Suitable for the food sector.

Industry: vending machinery

Success for the customer: The toothed belt axis drylin® ZLW-1040, which runs at 66 mm per revolution, is quiet and durable. As the toothed belt axis and the other bearing technology installed, such as slewing ring bearings, spherical plain bearings or ball bearings, operate completely maintenance-free without the need for external lubrication, they are perfect for vending machinery. This also makes them hygienic and suitable for applications in the food sector.

The BistroBox from the Austrian company of the same name is a self-service pizzeria with the first pizza oven of its kind in the Alpine republic: the pizza is ready to eat in just 90 seconds at the touch of a button. This is made possible by combining different production steps - from picking up the chilled pizza to delivering the finished baked product to the customer - in just one appliance.

This chain of sophisticated production steps in just one machine also required a well thought-out, broad selection of storage technology, as there is no shortage of movement in the vending machine. Each process step requires a combination of different movements, whether swivelling, turning, lifting, lowering or pulling out.

This is also evident when looking at the process stations: Once the customer has selected and paid for their desired pizza at the terminal, a platform - comparable to a pizza pusher - moves within the vending machine to the vending machine's cooling station. The pizzas, which have been cooled at 5 °C and quality-checked, are already waitingthere together with their packaging. The platform extends, picks up the pizza, retracts, swivels back and moves to the next station on a different level, where the packaging is removed from the pizza. The platform then swivels to the pizza oven where the product is baked at 300 °C. Finally, the pizza is transported to the delivery compartment, where the customer can receive their ordered food.

When selecting the storage technology, it was important to ensure that the self-service systems, which operate completely independently, are absolutely maintenance-free and fault-free and must achieve a high service life. The storage technology also had to function smoothly at a specified temperature range of 5 to 300 °C. As the vending machine delivers pizza, the high hygiene standards in food technology must also be met.

Jürgen Traxler, Technical CEO at BistroBox, and his team set out to find the maintenance-free storage technology that would allow the pizza to be hygienically transported through the entire process.

The toothed belt axis ZLW-1040 (Fig. 1) forms the centrepiece of the logistics system. The axis with a toothed belt tension of 150 N and a feed speed of 66 mm/rev ensures that the baking process runs smoothly and quickly. The completely maintenance-free system guides the platform with the pizza vertically to the height of the cooling station, then to the oven and finally to the level of the output tray. It works completely lubrication-free and is therefore perfect for applications in close proximity to food. The drylin® linear technology is also suitable for the wide temperature range of the application, which includes a pizza oven and a cooling station.

An energy chain from the E16 series does its work at the head end of the vertically installed toothed belt axis (Fig. 2). It guides the moving cable safely along the ceiling so that the toothed belt axis and the platform with the pizza can swivel into the cooling station, the oven and the output tray.

Once the pizza has been positioned in front of a station, the platform with the pizza extends and passes it into the station. Here, 3D-printed gears in special dimensions are used, which are made from the wear-resistant material i3, as well as several gear racks.

Before the cooled pizza is sent to the oven, it must be freed from its packaging. To do this, it is rotated several times on the platform on its own axis in an intermediate station. The rotation is made possible by the slewing ring bearing type PRT-02-20-AL (Fig. 4).

Finally arriving at the pizza oven, the oven door mechanism is supported by an igubal ® clevis joint of type GERMF-04 (Fig. 5).

In addition to these products, other of our products such as tribotape® sliding foils A160 to reduce resistance at friction points (Fig. 6) or xiros ball bearings (Fig. 7) and igubal ® circlip are also used at several points.