Flexible sheets of foodstuffs, such as a tortilla, are prepared for cooking by automatically wrapping each tortilla around a perforated inner cooking cylinder and telescoping an outer cooking cylinder over the so- wrapped inner cylinder. The wrapping and telescoping operations are carried out with the use of a carriage which rotates about a horizontal axis by feeding the inner cylinders to the carriage such that the cylinders are parallel to the axis of rotation and are carried in a circular path about that axis. At a feed station tortillas are fed sequentially in a generally radial direction into the path of the inner cylinders so that the outside of each cylinder contacts a surface of a tortilla. Vacuum is applied to the inside of each cylinder to hold the tortilla in place, and as the cylinder continues to move along its circular path it moves past a flexible guide arrangement which contacts the opposite surface of the tortilla and wraps it around the cylinder. Outer cooking cylinders are fed to the rotating carriage at a location axially spaced from the inner cylinders and in axial alignment therewith. Axial movement of each outer cylinder relative to the carriage and over a respective tortilla-wrapped inner cylinder results from engagement of one end of each outer cylinder with a fixed generally spiral cam which surrounds the appropriate part of the rotating carriage.
展开▼
