While today’s control system generate more data and allow for greater control of baking conditions, they are still limited in the data they can achieve. That’s why bakeries use oven profiling equipment that can travel along the baking belt gathering information about the oven conditions directly on the baking conveyor.

Oven profiling’s two primary applications are oven tuning and baked goods optimization, said Ray Pearce, sales engineer, ECD BakeWatch, Milwaukie, OR. Protected by a stainless steel thermal barrier, the company’s MOLE profiler travels with six thermocouple sensors clipped to pans across the belt. This product level ambient data captures a picture of the oven’s performance in the thermal profile. Temperature differences left to right are readily apparent, and cold and hot spots along the oven are revealed as well, pinpointing needed maintenance adjustments that will improve product yields and throughput.

Designed specifically for traveling R&D or corporate engineers, a new oven profiling kit from Reading Thermal, a brand of Reading Bakery Systems, Robesonia, PA, allows users to characterize environment and product core temperatures as well as airflow, energy transfer and moisture in just two passes. The Scorpion 2 Profiling Kit is based on the company’s highly regarded Scorpion 2 Data Logging Measurement System technology, according to Richard Starke, director and general manager of Reading Thermal.

“This system handles it all and provides the needed data in less than half the time normally required for a full profile to be developed,” he said. “While it isn’t appropriate for detailed side-to-side temperature or airflow variation measurements, the kit fills the previously unmet needs of the research and development or corporate engineer.”