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Butter packaging machine.
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Previously:
https://www.homemadetools.net/forum/...451#post158513
https://www.homemadetools.net/forum/...707#post123829
https://youtu.be/cPGerl_pi80
My inorganic chemistry and metallurgy friends here will understand the importance of "close packing." Each size had its own pattern. The orange cartons were stacked 42 40lbers to the pallet, app 1200 lbs. Because of the close pack pattern, the weight was borne by the fruit not the carton, which was flimsy 2-ply corrugated paper useful only for capturing the fruit, keeping the pattern in place. Anymore, the fruit is packed "volume fill" as a display convenience to the retailers. The VF cartons required substantially more paper because the corrugate bore the weight not the fruit. Today the fruit is transported in plastic returnable containers. Or it was the last I checked in.
The first generation pattern packers were operated by shop vacs. Later generations were connected to central air.
This is how it used to be done in the citrus industry starting in the late 1980s and into the 2000s. Before that the pattern was packed by hand by women, mostly. You can imagine the forearms of those people. Absolute brutes! more than drummers. (Imagine cute with forearms like Popeye!) Men were the packers of melons, and they, too, of course, had massive forearms.
Close packing was not limited to citrus and melons. Lettuce was packed that way (24 packs), plums and other items were as well. Their size designation was based on the pattern used to pack them.
awesome!!:thumbsup: we dont pack our oranges that way we just have manual packers...as in packing them into my mouth...or a jug fer drinken.