The chunks are added to the mix just after it leaves the Hoyer freezer. When the mix gets to the Fruit Feeder, its temperature is 22 degrees Fahrenheit, the consistency of a soft-serve or creemee. It is not so hard that the chunks can't be mixed in, yet not so soft that they just sink to the bottom of the pint of ice cream.

The machine itself is actually made up of four key parts: the hopper, auger, star wheel & scraper, and the blender agitator. Each of these components is important in making sure that the ice cream is getting the proper amount of chunks or fruit. If even just one of the parts of the fruit feeder is not working in harmony with the others, it may result in the ice cream not getting enough chunks, or too many chunks. Believe it or not, too many chunks is a problem!

The first important part of the Fruit Feeder is the hopper. The hopper is a bin that sits on top of the machine and can hold up to fourteen gallons of ingredients. This is the bin into which the worker at the Fruit Feeder scoops the ingredients. Rotating prongs stir up the ingredients to keep them from clumping together and to keep the machine from becoming clogged.

Once the ingredients have passed through the bottom of the hopper they go into the auger. The auger is simply a large rotating screw. The ingredients drop between the threads of the screw and are pushed on down the line as the screw turns. At the end of the auger the ingredients exit through a cylinder which is mostly cut away so that the person working at the Fruit Feeder can view the chunks or fruit to make sure that everything is running smoothly.

From here the ingredients enter the enrobing chamber, which contains the starwheel and scraper. This is also where the inlet pipe containing the ice cream enters the Fruit Feeder, and where the next important steps in the fruit-feeding process take place.

The starwheel is a four-pointed star disk. As it rotates, the ingredients fall into the spaces between the points and rotate too. As the starwheel rotates, the ingredients are scraped out and dropped into the mix as it flows beneath the starwheel. The starwheel can rotate at different speeds depending on the amount of chunks required in the ice cream. The faster it rotates, the more chunks are blended into the ice cream mix. It can rotate as fast as 55 revolutions per minute or as slow as 8 rpm. Once the chunks have been added, the ice cream exits the enrobing chamber.

Once out of the chamber, the ice cream, still at the soft serve consistency, enters the blender tube. This is a four foot long tube which contains the blender agitator. As the ice cream enters the blender tube it contains pockets of chunks which are not yet evenly distributed. That's the job of the blender agitator. The agitator is made up of several paddles. As the ice cream passes through the tube, the paddles rotate and blend the chunks into the ice cream. Like the starwheel, the agitator can spin at various speeds. It can spin anywhere from 5-140 rpm. It all depends on the amount of chunks and the amount of blending it will take to evenly distribute them.

Yes! Now you get to see how we fit all of that good stuff into those little pint containers! Whoever said that "good things come in small packages" must have seen what an Automatic Filler can do...