# Healthy Snacks Factory Production Line

Follow vegetables and whole grains through a snack factory: intake, washing, mixing, extrusion, baking, seasoning, cooling, inspection and packing

By Jondher Alvarez

Topic: Machines

[Open the interactive Jig](https://ask.jig.com/j/MdKBHBr0DAcP)

## Transcript

### 1. From Field to Snack Bag

This production line turns vegetables and whole grains into crunchy baked snacks\. Follow the pieces from left to right as they are washed, mixed, shaped, baked, flavoured, cooled, checked and packed\.

Drag to turn the factory and pinch or scroll to zoom\. A line like this can make a few hundred kilograms of snacks every hour\.

### 2. 1 · Intake

Ingredients arrive at the intake\. Carrots, peas and beetroot are tipped into a stainless steel hopper, a big funnel that feeds the line at a steady pace\. Whole\-grain flour waits in the tall silo behind, ready to be screwed across to the mixer\.

### 3. 2 · Washing

Vegetables are washed first\. A slowly turning drum full of small holes rolls them under spray nozzles, so soil and grit drop away into the water below\. A cleated belt, one with little ridges, then lifts them up to the mixer\.

Washing always comes before cutting, so dirt is never trapped inside\.

### 4. 3 · Mixing

Turning paddles stir flour, vegetables and a measured splash of water into a crumbly dough\. It is much drier than bread dough: only about 14 to 18 per cent water\.

### 5. 4 · Extrusion

The extruder is the heart of the line\. Two screws turn inside a heated barrel, squeezing and cooking the dough\. At the end it is forced through small holes in the die plate, where its water flashes into steam and each piece puffs up as a spinning knife slices it off\.

Switch See inside off to close the barrel again\.

### 6. 5 · Baking Dry

Fresh puffs are still soft and damp\. They ride back and forth on three stacked mesh belts through hot air at about 60 to 120 °C, until only 2 to 5 per cent water is left\. Baking instead of frying means far less oil\.

### 7. 6 · Seasoning

In this gently tilted, slowly turning drum, a fine mist of oil helps the flavour stick\. Seasoning powder trickles in from the hopper while the pieces tumble, so each one gets an even coat\.

Seasoning is usually only about 4 to 8 per cent of the snack's weight\.

### 8. 7 · Cooling

Warm snacks would steam up inside a bag and turn soft\. Fans blow cool air down onto the belt, so the pieces reach room temperature and stay crisp\.

### 9. 8 · Inspection

Every piece is checked before packing\. A camera looks for burnt or odd\-coloured pieces, and the metal detector, a tunnel the belt runs through, can sense even a tiny speck of metal\. Anything suspicious is pushed off into the red reject bin\.

Press the button to send a test card with a hidden metal bead through the tunnel\.

### 10. 9 · Packing

High on the platform, a multihead weigher fills many small buckets and picks the mix of them closest to the target weight\. Below, the bagger wraps film around a tube, drops in the snacks with a puff of nitrogen, then seals and cuts each bag\.

Nitrogen pushes out oxygen, which keeps snacks fresh and crunchy for longer\.