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1. Background and pain points analysis‌
‌Company Overview‌:
A certain food company is a large baked food manufacturer, focusing on the production of sliced ​​toast, sandwich bread, baguette and other products, with a daily output of 500,000 bags, and is supplied to supermarkets and chain catering brands across the country. In recent years, the company has faced the following challenges due to increased consumer attention to food safety:

‌Increased foreign object complaints‌: Consumers have repeatedly reported that metal foreign objects (such as wire, blade debris, staples, etc.) were mixed into the bread, resulting in damage to the brand’s reputation.
‌Production line complexity‌: The production process involves multiple processes such as raw material mixing, forming, baking, slicing, and packaging. Metal foreign matter may come from raw materials, equipment wear or human operation errors.
‌Insufficient traditional detection methods‌: artificial visual inspection is inefficient and cannot detect internal foreign objects; metal detectors can only recognize ferromagnetic metals and are insufficiently sensitive to non-ferrous metals (such as aluminum, copper) or tiny fragments.

‌Core Requirements‌:
Achieve fully automatic and high-precision metal foreign object detection (covering iron, aluminum, copper and other materials, with a minimum detection accuracy of ≤0.3mm).
The inspection speed must match the production line (≥6000 packs/hour) to avoid becoming a production bottleneck.
The data is traceable and meets ISO 22000 and HACCP certification requirements.

‌2. Solutions and Device Deployment‌
Equipment selection: Use the ‌Fanchi tech brand food foreign object X-ray machine, with technical parameters as follows:

Detection ability: It can identify foreign objects such as metal, glass, hard plastic, gravel, etc., and the metal detection accuracy reaches 0.2mm (stainless steel).
‌Imaging technology‌: Dual-energy X-ray technology, combined with AI algorithms to automatically analyze images, distinguishing the differences in foreign matter and food density.
‌processing speed‌: up to 6000 packets/hour, supports dynamic pipeline detection.
‌Exclusion system‌: Pneumatic jet removal device, response time is <0.1 seconds, ensuring that the isolation rate of the problematic product is >99.9%.
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‌Risk Point Position‌:
Raw material reception link: Flour, sugar and other raw materials may be mixed with metal impurities (such as damaged transportation packaging by suppliers).
‌Mixing and forming links‌: The mixer blades are worn and metal debris are produced, and metal debris remain in the mold.
‌Slicing and packaging links‌: The blade of the slicer is broken and the metal parts of the packaging line fall off.
‌Equipment Installation‌:
Install an X-ray machine before (after slices) to detect the molded but unpacked bread slices (Figure 1).
The equipment is linked to the production line, and the detection is triggered by photoelectric sensors to synchronize the production rhythm in real time.
‌Parameter settings‌:
Adjust the X-ray energy threshold according to bread density (soft bread vs. hard baguette) to avoid misdetecting.
Set the foreign object size alarm threshold (metal ≥0.3mm, glass ≥1.0mm).
‌3. Implementation effect and data verification‌
‌Detection performance‌:

‌Foreign object detection rate‌: During the trial operation, 12 metal foreign object events were successfully intercepted, including 0.4mm stainless steel wire and 1.2mm aluminum chip debris, and the leakage detection rate was 0.
‌False alarm rate‌: Through AI learning optimization, the false alarm rate has dropped from 5% in the early stage to 0.3% (such as the case of misjudging bread bubbles and sugar crystals as foreign objects is greatly reduced).
‌Economic Benefits‌:

‌Cost Savings‌:
Reduced 8 people in artificial quality inspection positions, saving about 600,000 yuan in annual labor costs.
Avoid potential recall events (estimated based on historical data, the loss of a single recall exceeds 2 million yuan).
‌Efficiency Improvement‌: The overall efficiency of the production line has been increased by 15%, because the inspection speed is exactly matched with the packaging machine, and there is no shutdown waiting.
‌Quality and Brand Improvement‌:
The customer complaint rate fell by 92%, and it was certified by a chain catering brand "Zero Foreign Materials" supplier, and the order volume increased by 20%.
Generate daily quality reports through inspection data, realize traceability of the entire production process and successfully pass the BRCGS (Global Food Safety Standard) review.

‌4. Operation and maintenance details‌
‌People Training‌:
The operator needs to master the equipment parameter adjustment, image analysis (Figure 2 shows typical foreign object imaging comparison), and fault code processing.
The maintenance team cleans the X-ray emitter window weekly and calibrates sensitivity monthly to ensure device stability.
‌Continuous Optimization‌:
AI algorithms are regularly updated: accumulating foreign object image data and optimizing model recognition capabilities (such as distinguishing sesame seeds from metal debris).
Equipment scalability: reserved interfaces, which can be connected to the factory MES system in the future to realize real-time quality monitoring and production scheduling linkage.

‌5. Conclusion and Industry Value‌
By introducing Fanchi tech food foreign object X-ray machine, a certain food company not only solved the hidden dangers of metal foreign object, but also shifted quality control from "post-remediation" to "pre-prevention", becoming a benchmark case for intelligent upgrades in the baking industry. This solution can be reused for other high-density foods (such as frozen dough, dried fruit bread) to provide enterprises with full-chain food safety guarantees.