Hi folks,I have been offered an ex display Prima and enrober attachment at a reasonable price.The machine has less than 5 hours working time so it's essentially new. This would be our first continuous temperer and enrober, we currently have the old wheel style machines.I know the Prima has a 7kg working bowl with a theoretical 35 kg/ h output. While 35kg/h is fine I wondered how easily is this achieved? Is this just a case of adding melted chocolate to the working bowl whenever you want? Sorry, I've never used a continuous temperer before so don't really know how they work! My main concern is that I'm buying too small a working bowl and it would just be time consuming to constantly fill up.Also, how easy are these machines to clean and swap from dark to milk, is there any chocolate waste?Thanks in advance for any advise.Calum
updated by @calum: 04/11/15 01:18:12

Some figures:Av. 100kg/ weekBusy: 250kg/week

Any thoughts would be very much appreciated, looking to make a decision on this tomorrow so would love to hear so,e thoughts.Thanks.

Calum -

Vantage House sells and services FBM in the UK. Have you been in contact with them?

First off, throughput is on FBM machines is closer to 3x bowl capacity per hour than 5x. To get close to this throughput you do need to keep topping up the bowl as you go. You don't want to let the bowl get below 1/3 empty in normal operation as the machine is at its most efficient and stable when it's full (this applies to all continuous tempering machines of this type).

There is no way that you are going to use even close to 35kg an hour with an enrober. Think about it. 1000 pieces per hour at 10gr per piece is 10kg of chocolate. That's well within the Prima's range and far more than you can crank through the machine.

The hourly limit is reachable when filling molds. If you are hand-depositing 2 molds/minute and each mold has four, 60gr cavities then this is about .5kg/minute or 30kg/hr. In practice it's a challenge to work uninterrupted for this amount of time, so you'd pace the work accordingly.

There's another factor. 100kg/week is about 2.5 kg/hr on average. 250kg in a busy week is 6kg/hr. If this is in fact your production throughput then the Prima is more than suitable for your operation.

In practical terms, the machine is less difficult to clean than the enrober belt. Yes, there is chocolate waste but good working habits can keep it to a minimum - a couple of hundred grams per changeover, maybe. The best approach is to only changeover at the end of the day. The machines can be cleaned (washed if necessary) and left to dry overnight. If you don't wash then getting any enrober belt perfectly clean is nigh on impossible. The best you can do is to work with a heat gun and remove the majority of the current chocolate before swapping in the new. What you can do is capture the initial chocolate that is mixed and use it in a ganache or something like that - rework, not waste.

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clay - http://www.thechocolatelife.com/clay/

H Clay,I'm dealing with vantage House in the UK at the moment as they have a used machine.Thanks for the advise above, very informative, as usual!Calum