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This Spaghetti and Pasta Compression Fixture was custom designed for one of Italy's best-known manufacturers of traditionally made high quality 100% durum wheat pasta. The company wanted a test fixture to evaluate various textural properties of cooked spaghetti under compression, simulating human bite and mouth-feel.
Used in conjunction with a Lloyd Instruments test machine and data analysis/applications software, the fixture was designed to compress a small sample of pasta between two circular compression platens and to measure the thickness at two specified loads. The jig uses the compression plates as a load for compression. Thickness measurements are taken before and after the test to measure the recovery of the sample and to determine if it is a good or bad batch.
The fixture consists of a fixed lower compression platen and a top compression platen attached to the base of a vertical rod which is driven up or down by the system. The effective weight of the top plate assembly is reduced to 15 g using a counterweight, which is attached via a toothed belt. This belt is suspended over two pulleys, one of which is attached to a high resolution encoder. When the top compression plate moves, the encoder rotates to measure the postion of the top compression platen.
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