UK manufacturer and supplier of texture analysis equipment Lloyd Instruments announced this week that it has launched a new test fixture designed specifically to meet the quality assessment requirements of spaghetti, pasta and noodlesproducers.
The Spaghetti and Noodle Compression attachment is designed to take thickness measurements of the cooked product in order to calculate a range ofparameters including sample compressibility.
A cooked product sample is placed onto the fixture's lower compressionplate. With a single key operation, the testing machine automaticallylowers the upper compression plate via a high resolution encoder and takesthree thickness measurements at two specified loads of 15gf and 515gf. Themachine then stores and analyses the results in the operating software.
Additional results are calculated from these three thickness measurements toevaluate sample compressibility and other parameters. The entire test isdriven by the company's Nexygen MT software with the Ondio Application Builder program.
Lloyd Instruments claims that in addition to compressibility, the system evaluates product recovery, springinessand helps manufacturers calculate cooking times, assess ingredients mixes, understand product behaviour after freezing and help to keep production costs low.