The Spiral Hardener
The Spiral Hardener is, quite literally, the coolest piece of machinery we own. It's the "Godzilla" of all freezers. Its main purpose is to deep-freeze our pints of ice cream and frozen yogurt as quickly as possible in order to avoid the formation of ice crystals. The Spiral Hardener can take the liquid ice cream mix from 22 degrees Fahrenheit to -10 degrees Fahrenheit in only 2 1/2 hours. Once frozen that solidly, our pints are ready to be shipped all across the country, and beyond.

The Spiral Hardener consists of an outer stationary frame with an inner revolving cage with vertical beams. Picture a bird cage (make that a bird cage that's 3 stories high..) suspended inside of a box and you will have a general idea of what the Spiral Hardener looks like on the outside. Imagine a huge, wide corkscrew (with pints of ice cream in the screw grooves) revolving slowly on the inside of that bird cage, and you'll have an even better idea (well, maybe).

The 17-foot high, 24-tiered, corkscrew-shaped conveyor belt has 1,427 feet of moving belt and 1,526 feet of total belt made out of omni-flex mesh with double bar reinforcing links on both edges. When the spiral is full, it can hold as many as 3,750 sleeves of product.

Pints of ice cream and/or frozen yogurt enter the spiral at 22 degrees Fahrenheit and, after two and a half hours, the pints exit into our bundler room at 0 degrees Fahrenheit. The pints are frozen quickly -- the Spiral's refrigeration process occurs inside huge coils carrying liquid ammonia that is -50 degrees Fahrenheit. In addition, air is blown through the coils by large fans that create a windchill of -70 degrees Fahrenheit! The thrust of air from these fans is so powerful that it can propel a small jet.

Now, you may wonder, does the Spiral ever break down? It does, but this piece of machinery is equipped with its own safety shutdown mechanisms. Safety shutoff probes are strategically placed to be able to detect ice cream pileups. A fault warning horn will be activated and the spiral will automatically shut down if any other problems occur. Also, if temperatures of the pints exiting the spiral rise above 0 degrees Fahrenheit, our Quality Assurance Team will alert the Production crew about the high temperatures a nd the conveyor belt will be stopped until the pints have had enough time to freeze properly. We have a very high quality standard for our ice cream and frozen yogurt and we will not sell a pint before it has been frozen to just the right temperature.

Last stop: The Bundler. Really. Well, it's the last stop in the factory, anyway. It'll take a little more time before it ends up everywhere else, but don't worry about it now -- just go see what's happening at the Bundler...