Abstract: A drum-type coating apparatus for applying breading material to food product is configured to eliminate, in most circumstances, a hard cylindrical drum, to be replaced by a U-hanging belt, the belly of which provides all the operative utility of a cylindrical hard drum, but better than that, provides more clearance for cleaning operations, since the upper hemi-cylinder of a hard cylindrical drum provides no utility for tumbling purposes and only, to make matters worse, obstructs cleaning operations. Also, the overall coating apparatus for supporting the U-hanging belt, flexible drum is provided with provisions for the exchangeable substitution or elimination of accessories of the tumbling and/or flipping nature, including the U-hanging belt, flexible drum itself. In the elimination configuration, food product is not routed through any tumbling and/or flipping accessory but is instead run through a flat bed configuration. That way, delicate food product is protected from disintegration.

Abstract: A drum-type coating apparatus for applying breading material to food products is configured to eliminate, in most circumstances, a hard cylindrical drum, to be replaced by a U-hanging belt, the belly of which provides all the operative utility of a cylindrical hard drum, but better than that, provides more clearance for cleaning operations, since the upper hemi-cylinder of a hard cylindrical drum provides no utility for tumbling purposes and only, to make matters worse, obstructs cleaning operations.

Abstract: Apparatus for coating food products with breading material has an excess breading-material circulation/re-circulation system, which itself has a main, central product-intake conveyor scraping across an up-sloping bottom panel flanked by left and right elevators that course through up-sloping gutters astride the central conveyor's bottom panel. The central conveyor is relatively broad but shallow for only carrying a relatively light load that becomes a bottom bed of breading material for conveyance of food product thereon. In contrast, the elevators are relatively deep but thin in order to carry relatively-substantial streams of breading material, and disproportionate to their thin width, which are ultimately elevated to a topcoat-applicator and becomes a top-coating of breading material. One or more plows are arranged in the overhead space above the central conveyor to divert a main stream of excess breading material into one or more diverted streams aimed at the flanking elevators.