Abstract: A machine for slicing oblong fruit which have no pits, such as pitted olives, includes an inclined roller-type conveyor belt extending between an open-bottom hopper-type loading station to an interdigitated rotary knife-type of cutting station served by a comb-type of slice-unloading station. The hopper is open not only upwards and downwards, but also towards downstream, and the rollers are annularly corrugated and made to rotate towards the hopper immediately downstream of the hopper, so as to load the conveyor belt with a single-depth layer of fruit oriented long axis transversally of the conveyor. At the cutting station, the knives on the upper knife drum spike the fruit in a row and transfer those fruit from the conveyor into the nip between the upper and lower knife drums where the knives on both drums cooperate to slice the fruit. By preference, the knives are disk-shaped with regular patterns of small teeth regularly interrupted by individual larger teeth.

Abstract: Generally cylindrical bodies of vegetable matter such as spears of asparagus of varying diameter are telescopically inserted tip end-first into the horizontally radially outwardly opening mouthpieces in a drum that is mounted to rotate on a horizontal axis. A take-in conveyor system running towards the mouthpieces in the loading station, and served by guides which converge toward the individual mouthpieces assist in socketing the bodies in the mouthpieces. Flexible collars in the mouthpieces constrict to grip the end portions of the bodies, and the drum indexes to dispose those bodies so that they project vertically upwards, at the same time bringing a next row of mouthpieces to the loading station.

Abstract: Olives from which the pits have already been removed are deposited on the upward-sloping carrying run of an endless conveyor which is made of a succession of rollers mounted to chains entrained about sprockets. The rollers have flexible disk-like fins of progressively increasing and decreasing diameter from fin to fin so that the olives tend to settle into pockets and orient with their lengths crosswise of the belt as the rollers are rotated. The belt conveys the olives into a shaft of slicing disks. Olive slices are received between slicing disks and an assisting roller pushes in the remainder of any olive only partially sliced through, except that contact of the slicing disks with any pit still contained in an olive pushes that olive more deeply into a respective inter-roller pocket by flexing the respective roller fins. At separate locations along the conveyor, a comb pulls the olive slices out from between the slicing disks, and the pocket-entrapped pit-containing olives are dislodged.

Abstract: The machine for pitting olives and for stuffing the pitted olives with an edible paste, such as anchovy paste, a plurality of axially opening bonnets are arranged in a circle for rotation about an axis through a succession of stations. At a first station, a pit-containing olive is placed in each bonnet and held there by a fastening bush. Subsequently, the pit with an adhered tapin is punched from the olive; the pit is severed from the tapin and only the tapin is retained. As the pitted olive is rotated to a further station, a succession of orifices of a nozzle connected to an injector for stuffing paste is temporarily opened to the olive cavity. Then a gelification agent is applied to the paste contained in the olive, the saved tapin is restored to the olive as a cavity closure, and the fastening bush is withdrawn, freeing the stuffed olive from the machine.

Abstract: A machine is provided for forming a supply of jellifiable fluid into jelled spherical droplets by pouring that fluid out of a housing through nozzles while intersecting the path of the fluid with knives rotating in a horizontal plane on a rotated axle. Valves for the nozzles and the rotational speed of the axle are subject to adjustment. A mechanical arrangement is provided for holding all of the valves open to a desired degree against a closing force provided by springs. A jellifying agent is fed through the axle and out onto the knives so that jellification begins to occur immediately as the jellifiable fluid is cut into segments by the rotating knives.