Journal articles on the topic 'High-speed packaging machinery'

In this paper, a DSP-based servo motion controller is developed for the horizontal flow wrapper, where the multi-axis servo drives and electronic anti-cut are designed to improve automatization and safety for the packaging system. This paper relates generally to high speed packaging machinery with electronic cam and more particularly to the process of electronic anti-cut, where product-out-of-registration conditions can be sensed and automatically passed without damage to the seal heads and without manual intervention.

In response to recent European Union (EU) regulations on packaging waste, the packaging industry requires greater fundamental understanding of the machine-material interactions that take place during packaging operations. Such an understanding is necessary to handle thinner lighter-weight materials, specify the material properties required for successful processing and design right-first-time machinery. The folding carton industry, in particular, has been affected by the new legislation and needs to realize the potential of computational tools for simulating the behaviour of packaging materials and generating the necessary understanding. This paper describes the creation and validation of a detailed finite element model of a carton during a common packaging operation. The model is applied here to address the problem of carton buckling. The carton was modelled using a linear elastic material definition with non-linear crease behaviour. Air inrush suction, which is believed to cause buckling, was quantified experimentally and incorporated using contact damping interactions. The results of the simulation are validated against high-speed video of carton production. The model successfully predicts the pattern of deformation of the carton during buckling and its increasing magnitude with production rate. The model can be applied to study the effects of variation in material properties, pack properties and machine settings. Such studies will improve responsiveness to change and will ultimately allow end-users to use thinner, lighter-weight materials in accordance with the EU regulations.

A high-speed carton packaging machine is developed in view of the current of low-degree automation and low-speed in the packaging industry. Monitoring system of this high-speed carton packaging machine is designed on basis of B&R programmable computer control (PCC) system according to the structure of the packaging machine and process control requirements, and has automatically achieved to feed pad, feed bottles, group bottles, spray glue, package with Servo synchronization technology. The high-speed carton packaging machine has reached world advanced level in performance and packaging speed at the speed of 80 packages per minute.

In the process of printing machines increasing and reduction of speed, the image collected from online detection system for different speed of printing needs picture adaptive processing. In this paper, there are two methods put forward to realize above goal. One method is sequential similarity detection algorithms and the other is ratio value. Apply with VC++ programming to realize image matching on the premise of the unique CCD detection equipment. The experiment results show that: sequential similarity algorithm on the premise of printing machine running in low speed, by comparing with threshold to realize variable-speed imaging. The ratio value method can be used for a variety of printing speed and it has high speed, high detection efficiency and wide range of application.

MEMS based technologies provide a unique opportunity to develop micro-machined mechanical transducers for a variety of sensing applications. The micro-machining techniques that have been widely used for MEMS sensors provide a viable path for developing miniature sensors required for monitoring stress and strain for high speed impacts. Moreover, this technology allows sensors to be tailored to respond to specific vibrational modes and mode types. In particular, the electro-mechnical properties must be able to support very short response times without compromising signal strength. In this paper, we present the design and fabrication of micro-miniature PNZT based transducers for short duration mechanical impacts. Comparisons of their performance with conventional PZT transducers are presented. A discussion is also given of key performance parameters and the effects of post-fabrication processing and packaging on transducer performance.

A liquid packaging machine produces liquid packaging bags from roll film by cooperatively controlling the vertical seal roller, horizontal seal roller, and cut roller. These rollers are driven separately by servomotors as a multi-axis servo mechanism. Positioning control on the moving film is essential to make bags of accurate size. To achieve accurate positioning without lowering productivity, we propose two control methods. One is a two-step velocity control of the horizontal seal roller. This method enables continuous and high speed production of bags of arbitrary size. The second is phase control, which determines the accuracy of the cutting position on the film according to the sealing position. Phase control changes the rotary phase difference of the horizontal seal roller and the cut roller by adjusting the high feeding velocity of the cut roller, or by adjusting the low feeding velocity of the cut roller. The control system developed was applied to a DANGANV liquid packaging machine.

Characterized with auto inspecting ability, high-speed and accuracy, machine vision technology is one of the most important means in medicine packaging and food processing industries. A structural system based on PC, DSP and visual sensor is presented in this paper. A sub pixel edge detection algorithm in image processing for high precision automatic alignment system which was an urgent problem on the actual machine vision field. The algorithm uses the spatial moments to detect the location of the edge in sub-pixel which improved the analysis speed and optimized the application of the whole system.

In this paper, we investigate a novel application of online planning and scheduling: controlling an automated infeeder for a packaging line of food and consumer packaged goods. In this system, products arrive continuously at high-speed from the end of the production line and need to be arranged into a specific configuration for downstream primary and secondary packaging machines. In collaboration with a domain expert from the packaging industry, we developed an innovative design for a reconfigurable parallel infeed system using a matrix of interchangeable smart belts. We also adapted our online model-based Plantrol planner to this domain. Our planner can control various configurations of the new in-feed system through simulation both in nominal planning and when runtime failures occur. We are also building a small physical prototype to validate the new design and our sofeware framework.

In order to meet the high speed, high precision, high reliability of the packaging machine, a novel control system is provided. In the hardware, the main circuits consisted of main processor module, memory module, temperature measurement and control module, input signal detection module, material split packing module, output driver module, human-machine interface module, system monitor module, power module and JTAG debug module, etc. In the software, the multi-tasking operating system μC/OS-Ⅱ and the graphical user interface μC/GUI were successfully transplanted into LPC2478. Then an experimental platform was established. And many control tasks, including automatic measurement, making bags, loading, transferring, pumping vacuum, sealing and data display, were automatically and continuously executed on the platform. Finally the results show: the machine can package 30 packets (5 g per packet) in a minute; the packaging errors ≤ 0.2 g; the packaging qualified rates ≥ 93%. In conclusion, the system performance is good.

Creation of a mathematical model of the mechanism of winding of rewinding machines, research of influence of size of shift of packing on critical speeds and development of recommendations for the decision of the set task. Method. When working out the thread for packaging, high-speed winding mechanisms are subject to high requirements, both for the quality of the resulting packaging and for the speed of the bobbin holder. When installing the spool on the spool holder, it is possible to shift it in the axial direction from the design position, which leads to a change in the position of the center of mass of the package with the spool, and in accordance with changes in dynamic loads on the spool holder. Therefore, there is a need to determine the magnitude of the impact of the displacement of the package along the axis of the bobbin holder on the operating speeds of the equipment and the quality of the resulting packages. In the winding process, the placement of the package on the bobbin holder of the winding mechanism of the rewinding machine plays an important role. The displacement of the center of mass of the package affects both the operating speed of the equipment and the quality of the package. In rewinding machines, a mechanism for controlling the thickness of the package is installed, which controls the speed processes during winding. When the coil is shifted towards the top of the cone, incomplete packing (less weight) is developed. When shifted to the side opposite the top of the packing cone, on the contrary, the weight of the packing increases. In addition, the magnitude of the displacement of the package affects the dynamic loads of the winding mechanism. Results. The influence of the magnitude of the packing displacement along the axis of the bobbin holder on the critical speeds of the winding mechanism and the quality of packing is determined. Scientific novelty. The study and analysis of the influence of the magnitude of the displacement of the bobbin with packaging on the critical speeds of the winding mechanism are conducted. The magnitude of the influence of the position of the masses of the center of the coil with packing relative to the bobbin holder on the value of the critical speeds of the winding mechanism is determined. The obtained results allow to control the range of working speeds of the winding mechanism depending on the parameters of the position of the spool on the spool holder, which can be used to adjust the speed of the winding process when packing the spool and make changes when designing the rewinding equipment. The method of determining the maximum possible speeds in the process of rewinding textile material on rewinding machines with direct drive of the bobbin, taking into account the position of the bobbin on the bobbin holder, which can be used in the design of new mechanisms or modernization of existing ones. Practical significance. A dynamic model of the winding mechanism has been developed. The magnitude of the influence of packing displacement on critical speeds is shown. Methods and designs for improving the quality of packaging and stable operation of equipment are proposed.

Abstract Ultrasonic welding is a common and indispensable technology in the packaging of power electronics. Typical applications are terminals and power contacts, e.g. in motor drive or inverter modules, as well as busbar connections. The process control requirements for welding power electronics connectors or bus bars, e.g. on batteries, are increasingly overlapping with requirements typical for heavy wire bonding. Smart ultrasonic welding is a new technology combining the force and ultrasonic power of conventional ultrasonic welding equipment with the flexibility, precision, speed and advanced process control features of wire bonding machines. This contribution discusses the characteristics of smart welding equipment and presents process results for two different smart welding applications. On the low power end, smart welding and wire bonding are compared in the production of cylindrical cell battery packs, using a 100 W ultrasound system and aluminium connectors. Towards the high power end, 3 × 1.2 mm2 copper leads are welded to DBC with a contact area of 3 × 3 mm2, using a 1.5 kW ultrasound system. Both applications demonstrate advantages of smart welding over conventional ultrasonic welding.

For the formation of high-quality packaging of cross winding on machines with a constant speed, release into the composition of the winding mechanism introduce a dispersion device of the bundle winding, providing a change in the speed of the yarn guide according to the law with a long cycle of work. When laying the thread with a slotted drum, as on a spinning self-rolling machine PSK-225 SH there is no way to influence the movement of the yarn guide. In this case, effective dispersion can be achieved by periodically changing the clamping force of the bobbin to the winding shaft. When the effort of pressing the bobbin to the winding shaft changes, the contact radius of the bobbin changes, and hence its rotation frequency, which in turn leads to a change in the angle of elevation of the coil. A mathematical model is obtained that describes the change in the angle of the coil on the package from the effort of pressing the bobbin to the winding shaft. It is shown that such a device can effectively eliminate defects in the structure of the winding in the form of bundles and ribbons.

<p>5G wireless network technology is going operate within the environment of other electrical, electronic and electromagnetic devices, components and systems, with capability of high speed data connectivity acting as network transceiver stations with Massive MIMO for Internet of Things (IoT). Considering the level of interoperability, electromagnetic Interference and electromagnetic compatibility to avoid electromagnetic pulse effects (EMP) which is capable of not only causing network malfunctions but total devices and equipments failure in mission critical operations, like hospital MRI scan machines, security profiling and data handling or even personal healthcare devices like heart pacemaker. Electromagnetic energy coupling in PCB due to: radiation, reflection and Crosstalk generates reliability challenges affecting Signal Integrity between traces of multilayer boards stalks, power bus and packaging creating Electromagnetic interference (EMI) in PCB leading false clock response to system failure. Above were considered very essential when deploying 5G wireless network facility as presented in this paper. </p>

A high vacuum environment safeguards the performance of special processing technologies and high-precision parts such as nanosecond laser processing, chip packaging, and optical components. However, it poses higher requirements for the machine tool, which makes the temperature control of machine tools an important goal in design and development. In this paper, the thermal properties of a large-scale 5-axis laser processing machine tool in a vacuum environment were investigated. The thermal contact resistance between parts is identified by the parametric simulation and experiment. The whole machine temperature field was then obtained based on the fluid–thermal coupling model and verified by experiment. The results showed that the thermal contact resistance of the motor and reducer with the water cold plate was 560 W/(m2∙°C) and 510 W/(m2∙°C), respectively, and the maximum temperature increase of the machine was 3 °C. Based on the results, the machine tool’s temperature increase prediction chart was obtained by simulation under different processing conditions such as cooling water flow rate, cooling water temperature, motor speed, and ambient temperature. It provides technical and data references for the research on the thermal stability of the machine tool in processing.

Advancements in electronic packaging performance and cost have historically been driven by higher integration primarily provided by fab shrinks that has followed the well-known Moore's law. However, due to the tremendous and continuously increasing cost of building new fabs, the performance/cost improvements achieved via node shrinks are negated. This leaves packaging innovation as the vehicle to achieve future cost-performance improvements. This has initiated a More-than-Moore idea that has led to vigorous R&D in packaging. Advanced packages which employ ultra-fine pitch flip chip technology for chip-to-substrate, chip-to-chip, or chip-to-interposer for the first level interconnect have been developed as an answer to obtaining higher performance. However, the costs are too high as compared to traditional wire bonding. The status today is that the fundamental technical hurdles of manufacturing the new advanced packages have been solved, but cost reduction and yield improvements have to be addressed for large-scale adoption into high volume manufacturing. In traditional flip chip assembly silicon chips are tacked onto a substrate and then the solder joints are melted and mass reflowed in an oven. This mass reflow technique is troublesome as the pitch of the solder bumps become finer. This is due to the large differences in the thermal expansion coefficient of the die and the substrate, which creates stress at the solder joints and warpage of the package when the die and substrate are heated and cooled together. To mitigate and resolve this issue, thermo-compression bonders have been developed which locally reflow the solder without subjecting the entire substrate to the heating and cooling cycle. This requires that the bondhead undergo heating past the melting point of solder and then cooling down to a low enough temperature to pick the next die from the wafer that is mounted to tape. Machines in the market today can accomplish this temperature cycle in 7 to 15 seconds. This is substantially slower than the standard flip chip process which leads to high cost and is delaying the introduction of these new packages. This paper shows a flip chip bonder with a new heating and cooling concept that will radically improve the productivity of thermo-compression bonding. Data and productivity cycles from this new bond head with heating rates of over 200°C/sec and cooling of faster than 100°C/sec are revealed. Experimental results are shown of exceptional temperature accuracy across the die of 5°C throughout the cycle and better than 3°C at the final heating stage. The high speed thermo-compression bonds are analyzed and the efficacy of the new concept is proven. Excellent temperature uniformity while heating rapidly is an absolute necessity for enabling good solder joints in a fast process. Without good temperature uniformity, additional dwell times need to be incorporated to allow heat to flow to all of the joints, negating any benefits from rapid heating. Whereas the current state-of-that-art is often to program temperature in steps, this bonder can be commanded and accurately follows more complex temperature profiles with great accuracy. Examples of how this profiling can be used to enhance the uniformity and integrity of the joints with non-conductive pastes, film, and without underfill along with the associated productivity improvements will be shown. Tests that show portability across platforms that will lead to set up time and yield improvements and are identified and quantified. Additionally new ideas for materials and equipment development to further enhance productivity and yield are explored.

Food and beverage (F&amp;B) fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) contribute a major portion of global food loss and waste in the food supply chain in the form of food loss and package defect-induced waste. Food products pass through several processing lines including, mixing, filling, dispensing, sealing, and packaging before dispatch. To save on the cost and footprint to build additional machinery, producers resort to using the same lines for processing food powders with similar or limited ingredients. The storage, mixing and filling conditions of processing lines affect the food powder quality. Hoppers are large stainless-steel containers to store and mix contents before filling into jars/containers for subsequent sealing/capping at high speeds. Such high-speed mixing and filling lead to poor powder homogeneity. Currently, such content-filled containers are subjected to invasive sample extraction for offline spectroscopic analysis in a laboratory on randomly picked samples, which is time-consuming, uses expensive machinery, requires user-dependent data analysis, and results in food loss and waste in the form of poor-quality powders and/or powder/package waste from batch rejection. In this work, we focus on applying a non-invasive sensing technology to prevent food loss and waste generation through early detection and screening of poorly mixed powders in filled containers. A capacitive system is proposed to detect dielectric differences between varying levels of binary blending of beverage powders to showcase its application for powder homogeneity analysis. The detection scheme showed a fast response time (50 ms) and a low detection limit of 15% for detecting powder fraction in a binary blended mixture non-invasively.

AbstractThis paper introduces the Polylmide-Ceramic substrate for NEC SX Supercomputers. In case of high performance system such as supercomputers and top end machines in general purpose computer, sophisticated packaging technologies are essential to achieve fastest operations as well as to use highestspeed, highly integrated LSIs.Wiring substrate which mounts and interconnects LSIs is the key to back up LSI's higher logical-operations.The high speed interconnection wirings and high density LSI mounting are requested for substrate.The Polyimide-Ceramic substrate had been developed to meet these demands and have many features of high density thin film wiring, high power supply, high thermal conductivity and huge number of I/Os, in addition to high speed wiring.25μm wide 75μm center-to-center spacing, two signal layers, 6ns/m signal transmissions, 2.5W/cm2 high power density, 2177 I/Os on a 100mm square substrate have been achieved by using this super substrate technology.The packaging hierarchy, the first level packaging of TAB LSI, the second level of multi-chip packaging by using Polyimide-Ceramic substrate and liquid cooling module, and the third level of board assemblies are introduced.

In this paper, an efficiency improvement of a high-speed permanent magnet excited synchronous machine (PMSM) by the use of spot-welding as lamination packaging technology is realized. Welding, interlocking, clinching and gluing are typical technologies to manufacture electrical steel stacks of electrical machines. However, these processes deteriorate the magnetic properties of the steel sheets, thereby decreasing the overall efficiency of the machine. Variations of line-welding (six, eight, twelve, thirty two and forty) line welds and spot-welding procedure is performed and analyzed. A semi-physical iron loss separation approach is used to extract the IEM iron loss model (Eggers et al., IEEE Transactions on Magnetics 48(11) (2012), 3021–3024). These parameters are utilized during the finite element simulation to calculate the effective iron loss (efficiency) of the machine while using each joining procedure. A low speed, high-speed and WLTC-c3 driving cycle is exemplarily used to analyze the effects of each procedure on the machine efficiency at the different operating conditions.

To reduce the size and weight of power generation machines for portable devices, several systems to replace the currently used heavy batteries are being investigated worldwide. As micro gas turbines are expected to offer the highest power density, several research groups launched programs to develop ultra micro gas turbines: IHI firm (Japan), PowerMEMS Consortium (Belgium). At Onera, a research program called DecaWatt is under development in order to realize a demonstrator of a micro gas turbine engine in the 50 to 100 Watts electrical power range. A single-stage gas turbine is currently being studied. First of all, a calculation of the overall efficiency of the micro gas turbine engine has been carried out according to the pressure ratio, the turbine inlet temperature, and the compressor and turbine efficiencies. With realistic hypotheses, we could obtain an overall efficiency of about 5% to 10%, which leads to around 200 W/kg when taking into account the mass of the micro gas turbine engine, its electronics, fuel and packaging. Moreover, the specific energy could be in the range 300 to 600 Wh/kg, which largely exceeds the performance of secondary batteries. To develop such a micro gas turbine engine, experimental and computational work focused on: (1) a 10-mm diameter centrifugal compressor, with the objective to obtain a pressure ratio of about 2.5; (2) a radial inflow turbine; (3) journal and thrust gas bearings (lobe bearings and spiral grooves) and their manufacturing; (4) a small combustor working with hydrogen or hydrocarbon gaseous fuel (propane); (5) a high rotation speed microgenerator; and (6) the choice of materials. Components of this tiny engine were tested prior to the test with all the parts assembled together. Tests of the generator at 700,000 rpm showed a very good efficiency of this component. In the same way, compressor testing was performed up to 500,000 rpm and showed that the nominal compression rate at the 840,000 rpm nominal speed should nearly be reached.

During World War II, the Soviet Union’s food supply was in a state of crisis. Hitler’s army had occupied the agricultural heartlands of Ukraine and Southern Russia in 1941 and, as a result, agricultural production for the entire nation had plummeted. Soldiers in Red Army, who easily ate the best rations in the country, subsisted on a daily allowance of just under a kilogram of bread, supplemented with meat, tea, sugar and butter when and if these items were available. The hunger of the Red Army and its effect on the morale and strength of Europe’s eastern warfront were causes for concern for the Soviet government and its European and American allies. The one country with a food surplus decided to do something to help, and in 1942 the United States agreed to send thousands of pounds of meat, cheese and butter overseas to help feed the Red Army. After receiving several shipments of the all-American spiced canned meat SPAM, the Red Army’s quartermaster put in a request for a more familiar canned pork product, Russian tushonka. Pound for pound, America sent more pigs overseas than soldiers during World War II, in part because pork was in oversupply in the America of the early 1940s. Shipping meat to hungry soldiers and civilians in war torn countries was a practical way to build business for the U.S. meat industry, which had been in decline throughout the 1930s. As per a Soviet-supplied recipe, the first cans of Lend-Lease tushonka were made in the heart of the American Midwest, at meatpacking plants in Iowa and Ohio (Stettinus 6-7). Government contracts in the meat packing industry helped fuel economic recovery, and meatpackers were in a position to take special request orders like the one for tushonka that came through the lines. Unlike SPAM, which was something of a novelty item during the war, tushonka was a food with a past. The original recipe was based on a recipe for preserved meat that had been a traditional product of the Ural Mountains, preserved in jars with salt and fat rather than by pressure and heat. Thus tushonka was requested—and was mass-produced—not simply as a convenience but also as a traditional and familiar food—a taste of home cooking that soldiers could carry with them into the field. Nikita Khrushchev later claimed that the arrival of tushonka was instrumental in helping the Red Army push back against the Nazi invasion (178). Unlike SPAM and other wartime rations, tushonka did not fade away after the war. Instead, it was distributed to the Soviet civilian population, appearing in charity donations and on the shelves of state shops. Often it was the only meat product available on a regular basis. Salty, fatty, and slightly grey-toned, tushonka was an unlikely hero of the postwar-era, but during this period tushonka rose from obscurity to become an emblem of socialist modernity. Because it was shelf stable and could be made from a variety of different cuts of meat, it proved an ideal product for the socialist production lines where supplies and the pace of production were infinitely variable. Unusual in a socialist system of supply, this product shaped production and distribution lines, and even influenced the layout of meatpacking factories and the genetic stocks of the animals that were to be eaten. Tushonka’s initial ubiquity in the postwar Soviet Union had little to do with the USSR’s own hog industry. Pig populations as well as their processing facilities had been decimated in the war, and pigs that did survive the Axis invasion had been evacuated East with human populations. Instead, the early presence of tushonka in the pig-scarce postwar Soviet Union had everything to do with Harry Truman’s unexpected September 1945 decision to end all “economically useful” Lend-Lease shipments to the Soviet Union (Martel). By the end of September, canned meat was practically the only product still being shipped as part of Lend-Lease (NARA RG 59). Although the United Nations was supposed to distribute these supplies to needy civilians free of cost, travelers to the Soviet Union in 1946 spotted cans of American tushonka for sale in state shops (Skeoch 231). After American tushonka “donations” disappeared from store shelves, the Soviet Union’s meat syndicates decided to continue producing the product. Between its first appearance during the war in 1943, and the 1957 announcement by Nikita Khrushchev that Soviet policy would restructure all state animal farms to support the mass production of one or several processed meat products, tushonka helped to drive the evolution of the Soviet Union’s meat packing industry. Its popularity with both planners and the public gave it the power to reach into food commodity chains. It is this backward reach and the longer-term impacts of these policies that make tushonka an unusual byproduct of the Cold War era. State planners loved tushonka: it was cheap to make, the logistics of preparing it were not complicated, it was easy to transport, and most importantly, it served as tangible evidence that the state was accomplishing a long-standing goal to get more meat to its citizenry and improving the diet of the average Soviet worker. Tushonka became a highly visible product in the Soviet Union’s much vaunted push to establish a modern food regime intended to rival that of the United States. Because it was shelf-stable, wartime tushonka had served as a practical food for soldiers, but after the war tushonka became an ideal food for workers who had neither the time nor the space to prepare a home-cooked meal with fresh meat. The Soviet state started to produce its own tushonka because it was such an excellent fit for the needs and abilities of the Soviet state—consumer demand was rarely considered by planners in this era. Not only did tushonka fit the look and taste of a modern processed meat product (that is, it was standard in texture and flavor from can to can, and was an obviously industrially processed product), it was also an excellent way to make the most of the predominant kind of meat the Soviet Union had the in the 1950s: small scraps low-grade pork and beef, trimmings leftover from butchering practices that focused on harvesting as much animal fat, rather than muscle, from the carcass in question. Just like tushonka, pork sausages and frozen pelmeny, a meat-filled pasta dumpling, also became winning postwar foods thanks to a happy synergy of increased animal production, better butchering and new food processing machines. As postwar pigs recovered their populations, the Soviet processed meat industry followed suit. One official source listed twenty-six different kinds of meat products being issued in 1964, although not all of these were pork (Danilov). An instructional manual distributed by the meat and milk syndicate demonstrated how meat shops should wrap and display sausages, and listed 24 different kinds of sausages that all needed a special style of tying up. Because of packaging shortages, the string that bound the sausage was wrapped in a different way for every type of sausage, and shop assistants were expected to be able to identify sausages based on the pattern of their binding. Pelmeny were produced at every meat factory that processed pork. These were “made from start to finish in a special, automated machine, human hands do not touch them. Which makes them a higher quality and better (prevoskhodnogo) product” (Book of Healthy and Delicious Food). These were foods that became possible to produce economically because of a co-occurring increase in pigs, the new standardized practice of equipping meatpacking plants with large-capacity grinders, and freezers or coolers and the enforcement of a system of grading meat. As the state began to rebuild Soviet agriculture from its near-collapse during the war, the Soviet Union looked to the United States for inspiration. Surprisingly, Soviet planners found some of the United States’ more outdated techniques to be quite valuable for new Soviet hog operations. The most striking of these was the adoption of competing phenotypes in the Soviet hog industry. Most major swine varieties had been developed and described in the 19th century in Germany and Great Britain. Breeds had a tendency to split into two phenotypically distinct groups, and in early 20th Century American pig farms, there was strong disagreement as to which style of pig was better suited to industrial conditions of production. Some pigs were “hot-blooded” (in other words, fast maturing and prolific reproducers) while others were a slower “big type” pig (a self-explanatory descriptor). Breeds rarely excelled at both traits and it was a matter of opinion whether speed or size was the most desirable trait to augment. The over-emphasis of either set of qualities damaged survival rates. At their largest, big type pigs resembled small hippopotamuses, and sows were so corpulent they unwittingly crushed their tiny piglets. But the sleeker hot-blooded pigs had a similarly lethal relationship with their young. Sows often produced litters of upwards of a dozen piglets and the stress of tending such a large brood led overwhelmed sows to devour their own offspring (Long). American pig breeders had been forced to navigate between these two undesirable extremes, but by the 1930s, big type pigs were fading in popularity mainly because butter and newly developed plant oils were replacing lard as the cooking fat of preference in American kitchens. The remarkable propensity of the big type to pack on pounds of extra fat was more of a liability than a benefit in this period, as the price that lard and salt pork plummeted in this decade. By the time U.S. meat packers were shipping cans of tushonka to their Soviet allies across the seas, US hog operations had already developed a strong preference for hot-blooded breeds and research had shifted to building and maintaining lean muscle on these swiftly maturing animals. When Soviet industrial planners hoping to learn how to make more tushonka entered the scene however, their interpretation of american efficiency was hardly predictable: scientifically nourished big type pigs may have been advantageous to the United States at midcentury, but the Soviet Union’s farms and hungry citizens had a very different list of needs and wants. At midcentury, Soviet pigs were still handicapped by old-fashioned variables such as cold weather, long winters, poor farm organisation and impoverished feed regimens. The look of the average Soviet hog operation was hardly industrial. In 1955 the typical Soviet pig was petite, shaggy, and slow to reproduce. In the absence of robust dairy or vegetable oil industries, Soviet pigs had always been valued for their fat rather than their meat, and tushonka had been a byproduct of an industry focused mainly on supplying the country with fat and lard. Until the mid 1950s, the most valuable pig on many Soviet state and collective farms was the nondescript but very rotund “lard and bacon” pig, an inefficient eater that could take upwards of two years to reach full maturity. In searching for a way to serve up more tushonka, Soviet planners became aware that their entire industry needed to be revamped. When the Soviet Union looked to the United States, planners were inspired by the earlier competition between hot-blooded and big type pigs, which Soviet planners thought, ambitiously, they could combine into one splendid pig. The Soviet Union imported new pigs from Poland, Lithuania, East Germany and Denmark, trying valiantly to create hybrid pigs that would exhibit both hot blood and big type. Soviet planners were especially interested in inspiring the Poland-China, an especially rotund specimen, to speed up its life cycle during them mid 1950s. Hybrdizing and cross breeding a Soviet super-pig, no matter how closely laid out on paper, was probably always a socialist pipe dream. However, when the Soviets decided to try to outbreed American hog breeders, they created an infrastructure for pigs and pig breeding that had a dramatic positive impact of hog populations across the country, and the 1950s were marked by a large increase in the number of pigs in the Soviet union, as well as dramatic increases in the numbers of purebred and scientific hybrids the country developed, all in the name of tushonka. It was not just the genetic stock that received a makeover in the postwar drive to can more tushonka; a revolution in the barnyard also took place and in less than 10 years, pigs were living in new housing stock and eating new feed sources. The most obvious postwar change was in farm layout and the use of building space. In the early 1950s, many collective farms had been consolidated. In 1940 there were a quarter of a million kolkhozii, by 1951 fewer than half that many remained (NARA RG166). Farm consolidation movements most often combined two, three or four collective farms into one economic unit, thus scaling up the average size and productivity of each collective farm and simplifying their administration. While there were originally ambitious plans to re-center farms around new “agro-city” bases with new, modern farm buildings, these projects were ultimately abandoned. Instead, existing buildings were repurposed and the several clusters of farm buildings that had once been the heart of separate villages acquired different uses. For animals this meant new barns and new daily routines. Barns were redesigned and compartmentalized around ideas of gender and age segregation—weaned baby pigs in one area, farrowing sows in another—as well as maximising growth and health. Pigs spent less outside time and more time at the trough. Pigs that were wanted for different purposes (breeding, meat and lard) were kept in different areas, isolated from each other to minimize the spread of disease as well as improve the efficiency of production. Much like postwar housing for humans, the new and improved pig barn was a crowded and often chaotic place where the electricity, heat and water functioned only sporadically. New barns were supposed to be mechanised. In some places, mechanisation had helped speed things along, but as one American official viewing a new mechanised pig farm in 1955 noted, “it did not appear to be a highly efficient organisation. The mechanised or automated operations, such as the preparation of hog feed, were eclipsed by the amount of hand labor which both preceded and followed the mechanised portion” (NARA RG166 1961). The American official estimated that by mechanizing, Soviet farms had actually increased the amount of human labor needed for farming operations. The other major environmental change took place away from the barnyard, in new crops the Soviet Union began to grow for fodder. The heart and soul of this project was establishing field corn as a major new fodder crop. Originally intended as a feed for cows that would replace hay, corn quickly became the feed of choice for raising pigs. After a visit by a United States delegation to Iowa and other U.S. farms over the summer of 1955, corn became the centerpiece of Khrushchev’s efforts to raise meat and milk productivity. These efforts were what earned Khrushchev his nickname of kukuruznik, or “corn fanatic.” Since so little of the Soviet Union looks or feels much like the plains and hills of Iowa, adopting corn might seem quixotic, but raising corn was a potentially practical move for a cold country. Unlike the other major fodder crops of turnips and potatoes, corn could be harvested early, while still green but already possessing a high level of protein. Corn provided a “gap month” of green feed during July and August, when grazing animals had eaten the first spring green growth but these same plants had not recovered their biomass. What corn remained in the fields in late summer was harvested and made into silage, and corn made the best silage that had been historically available in the Soviet Union. The high protein content of even silage made from green mass and unripe corn ears prevented them from losing weight in the winter. Thus the desire to put more meat on Soviet tables—a desire first prompted by American food donations of surplus pork from Iowa farmers adapting to agro-industrial reordering in their own country—pushed back into the commodity supply network of the Soviet Union. World War II rations that were well adapted to the uncertainty and poor infrastructure not just of war but also of peacetime were a source of inspiration for Soviet planners striving to improve the diets of citizens. To do this, they purchased and bred more and better animals, inventing breeds and paying attention, for the first time, to the efficiency and speed with which these animals were ready to become meat. Reinventing Soviet pigs pushed even back farther, and inspired agricultural economists and state planners to embrace new farm organizational structures. Pigs meant for the tushonka can spent more time inside eating, and led their lives in a rigid compartmentalization that mimicked emerging trends in human urban society. Beyond the barnyard, a new concern with feed-to weight conversions led agriculturalists to seek new crops; crops like corn that were costly to grow but were a perfect food for a pig destined for a tushonka tin. Thus in Soviet industrialization, pigs evolved. No longer simply recyclers of human waste, socialist pigs were consumers in their own right, their newly crafted genetic compositions demanded ever more technical feed sources in order to maximize their own productivity. Food is transformative, and in this case study the prosaic substance of canned meat proved to be unusually transformative for the history of the Soviet Union. In its early history it kept soldiers alive long enough to win an important war, later the requirements for its manufacture re-prioritized muscle tissue over fat tissue in the disassembly of carcasses. This transformative influence reached backwards into the supply lines and farms of the Soviet Union, revolutionizing the scale and goals of farming and meat packing for the Soviet food industry, as well as the relationship between the pig and the consumer. References Bentley, Amy. Eating for Victory: Food Rationing and the Politics of Domesticity. Where: University of Illinois Press, 1998. 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