1. A method of manufacturing generally spherical pet treats comprising:
(a) providing a ground proteinaceous mix to a portioning device that divides said mix into smaller portions of roughly uniform volume,
(b) placing said portions on a first belt of a first conveyor moving at a first speed in a longitudinal direction,
(c) periodically pressing said portions with a second belt of a second conveyor,
where said second belt operates in a plane at a height above, and substantially parallel to, said first belt, said second belt moving at a second speed in substantially the same longitudinal direction as said first belt, while also oscillating back and forth in a lateral direction that is at an angle to said longitudinal direction, such that said portions are transformed into generally spherical shapes.
2. The process of claim 1 wherein said portioning is done using a fill and form molding process.
3. The process of claim 1 wherein said portioning is done by extruding said blend through at least one rectangular or circular die plate to form at least one rectangular or circular extrudate rod, followed by cutting said extrudate rod into roughly uniform pieces.
4. The process of claim 1 wherein said angle is approximately perpendicular.
5. The process of claim 1 wherein said height varies between A and B, where A is slightly less than the diameter of an equivalent sphere that has approximately the same volume as a said portion, and B is about 0.9 multiplied by A.
6. The process of claim 1 wherein at least one said first or second belts is textured.
7. The process of claim 1 wherein said second speed is between 40-80% faster than said first speed.
8. The process of claim 1 where said first and second belts are wire meshes.
9. The process of claim 1 where said portions are placed in such a way that the distance between any two portions placed adjacently is approximately between 1 and 3 times the desired diameter of the spherical pet treat.
10. The process of claim 1 wherein pressure exerted on said portions being pressed by said first and second belts is less than 10 psi.
11. A pet treat made by the process of claim 1 that contains from about 15% to about 75% by weight of said proteinaceous material, and where said proteinaceous material is selected from the group comprising one or more of the following: beef, chicken, pork, turkey, venison, offal, soy or vegetable protein.
12. A semi-moist pet treat made by the process of claim 1 having from about 15% to about 30% by weight of stabilized moisture content under normal storage conditions.
13. A semi-moist substantially spherical pet treat made by the process of claim 1 having a stabilized water activity between 0.60 and 0.78 under normal storage conditions.
14. A pet treat made by the process of claim 1 having a finished appearance substantially simulating a meatball made for human consumption by hand rolling coarse ground meat.
15. An apparatus for making portions to be finished into pet food products, comprising:
(a) a first conveyor belt operable at a first speed in a longitudinal direction,
(b) a second conveyor belt operable in a plane at a height above, and substantially parallel to, said first belt, said second conveyor belt operable at a second speed in substantially the same longitudinal direction as said first belt,
(c) said second belt also operable to oscillate back and forth in a lateral direction that is at an angle to said longitudinal direction,
(d) such that said first and second conveyor belts can be simultaneously operated to move, between said belts, non-spherical pliable foodstuff portions, in said longitudinal direction, while simultaneously pressing and rolling said portions in said longitudinal and lateral directions, so as to convert said portions into roughly spherical shapes.
16. The apparatus of claim 15 wherein said angle is approximately perpendicular.
17. The apparatus of claim 15 wherein said height is between A and B, where A is slightly less than the diameter of the desired spherical product, and B is about 0.9 multiplied by A.
18. The apparatus of claim 15 wherein at least one of said first or second belts is textured.
19. The apparatus of claim 15 wherein said first and second belts comprise wire meshes.
20. The apparatus of claim 19 where the nominal size of openings of one of the said meshes is less than or equal to 25% of the average diameter of the desired spherical product, and the nominal size of the other said mesh does not exceed 90% of said average diameter of desired spherical product.
The claims below are in addition to those above.
All refrences to claim(s) which appear below refer to the numbering after this setence.
1. A data transfer device for writing data to and reading data from a disk drive system through a plurality of ports of the data transfer device, the data transfer device comprising:
a first buffer for serially receiving, from a host system, control portions of data read transfers and data write transfers;
a second buffer for serially receiving, from the host system, data portions of data write transfers received by the first buffer; and
N temporary storage devices coupled to the first buffer and the second buffer, N being a positive integer greater than 1, the N temporary storage devices for parallelly receiving and temporarily storing consecutive control portions of the data read transfers and data write transfers from the first buffer;
wherein up to N of the data read transfers and data write transfers are transferred to the disk drive system through the plurality of ports simultaneously.
2. The data transfer device of claim 1 wherein the first and second buffers are FIFO buffers.
3. The data transfer device of claim 2 wherein, after each of the N temporary storage devices transfers a data read transfer or data write transfer and becomes available, a subsequent one of a data read transfer and data write transfer is transferred to each of the available N temporary storage devices from the first buffer.
4. A data transfer device for writing data to and reading data from a disk drive system, the data transfer device comprising:
a first buffer for serially receiving, from a host system, control portions of data transfers;
a second buffer for serially receiving, from the host system, data portions of data transfers received by the first buffer; and
N data transfer processing stations, coupled to the first buffer, N being a positive integer greater than 1, the N data transfer processing stations for parallelly receiving and processing consecutive control portions of the data transfers from the first buffer;
wherein up to N of the data transfer transfers are simultaneously processed by the data transfer processing stations.
5. The data transfer device of claim 4 wherein the first and second buffers are FIFO buffers.
6. The data transfer device of claim 5 wherein, after each of the N temporary storage devices transfers a data transfer and becomes available, a subsequent one of a data transfer is transferred to each of the available N temporary storage devices from the first buffer.
7. The data transfer device of claim 4 wherein data portions of data transfers queued in the second buffer are shifted out of the second buffer and written to a disk drive of the disk drive system upon its associated control portion being processed by one of the N data transfer processing stations.
8. The data transfer device of claim 4 wherein data portions of data transfers queued in the second buffer are shifted from the second buffer to the data transfer processing station processing its associated control portion and then written to a disk drive of the disk drive system.
9. A method of transferring data in a disk drive system comprising:
A. receiving data transfers from a host system;
B. queuing control portions of the data transfers in a first buffer;
C. queuing data portions of the data transfers in a second buffer;
D. shifting each of N control portions of the data transfers from the first buffer into one of N parallel data transfer stations, N being a positive integer greater than 1;
E. processing the N control portions in the N parallel data transfer stations simultaneously; and
F. shifting subsequent control portions of data transfers queued in the first buffer to ones of the N parallel data transfer stations that have completed a transfer of a previously stored control portion.
10. A data transfer device comprising:
means for receiving data transfers from a host system;
means for queuing control portions of the data transfers in a first buffer;
means for queuing data portions of the data transfers in a second buffer;
means for shifting each of N control portions of the data transfers from the first buffer into one of N parallel data transfer stations, N being a positive integer greater than 1;
means for processing the N control portions in the N parallel data transfer stations simultaneously; and
means for shifting subsequent control portions of data transfers queued in the first buffer to ones of the N parallel data transfer stations that have completed a transfer of a previously stored control portion.