How do factories deal with eggs?

April 11, 2008 10:48 AM

How do factories that make processed foods deal with eggs?

I can't think of any way a machine would be able to open up an egg and get the insides out without getting shell everywhere, but there must be a way. Google-fu is failing me. Pics/video of an egg machine operating would be swell!

posted by BuddhaInABucket to food & drink (10 comments total)

I used to work in a cookie factory when I was a teen. We used egg mixture from giant buckets. Which of course begs the question how those buckets were filled in the first place.
posted by monospace at 10:56 AM on April 11, 2008

With something like the CENTRA-MATIC III & EGG VALET?

I Googled egg cracking machine.
posted by bcwinters at 10:56 AM on April 11, 2008

An egg cracking machine is sold here. There seems to be a video, but you have to fill out a form to view it. I didn't try.

Unrelated short text.
posted by Perplexity at 11:00 AM on April 11, 2008

Couldn't you just smash a bunch of eggs, put 'em on a cheesecloth, and wait for the liquid to drip through?
posted by Greg Nog at 11:00 AM on April 11, 2008

Powdered egg and powdered food dye. (Pancake factory for me).
posted by Leon at 11:01 AM on April 11, 2008

The Centra-Matic III is kid stuff. Check out the Lippl Special Machines Engineering egg cracker. It can handle 60,000 eggs per hour!

Also, check out this prior AskMeFi thread about egg separating machines.
posted by jedicus at 11:10 AM on April 11, 2008

Following that AskMeFi thread lead me to the Diamond Automations 400S, which is capable of handling 40 eggs per second.

Also, there's this YouTube video of a segment from How It's Made that covers the whole process of modern egg production (mostly grading, sorting, and packaging but it has some neat machines nonetheless).
posted by jedicus at 11:17 AM on April 11, 2008

They either buy a commercial egg cracker/separator or they just buy pre-processed (cracked, separated) eggs in buckets.
posted by beerbajay at 12:13 PM on April 11, 2008

Adding to what beerbajay wrote:

Before plastic, welded metal pails were stored inwhole & separated eggs were stored in welded metal pails. The pail was similar to one of today's popcorn tins (in size) but the metal was a heavier gauge. The same can is/was also used for lard.

A majority of users have switched over to plastic but there are still a few small companies who buy the metal pail. These days the pails are almost exactly like the large size popcorn tins you see in stores - except with a welded side seam.

The lard/egg pail used to be one of the more popular metal products made by can companies but now there are only a handful of plants that manufacture it.

Probably too much information for the original question, right?
posted by jaimystery at 1:21 PM on April 11, 2008

Short clip of an industrial egg cracker. Super-awesome. Thanks for making me go look for this.
posted by ikkyu2 at 9:17 PM on April 11, 2008