The operation of splitting or cleaving an animal carcass has always been effected by suspending the carcass vertically by its rear legs and carrying out the splitting operation along the spine by means of a cutting tool such as a foil or blade initially displaced by hand.
This traditional technique has, for some time, already been replaced by an automatic splitting method allowing work rates compatible with the requirements of industrial slaughter-houses to be attained.
Such a method consists in advancing the carcasses, suspended via a conveyor or the like, in front of an intervention station consisting of an automatic machine comprising a cutting member which may be introduced between the rear legs of the suspended carcass in order to act along a vertical cutting plane, effecting the split into two half-carcasses.
The splitting operation may be carried out at a stationary station or when moving, i.e. combining the vertical displacement of the cutting member with the lateral displacement of the carcass when the conveyor advances continuously.
The known methods and installations for carrying out this operation are satisfactory and enable an animal carcass to be split into two half-carcasses which are separated so as to be subsequently directed towards appropriate intervention stations.
Depending on the subsequent methods of treatment or the means employed for suspending the carcass on the conveyor, it is sought to split the carcass, leaving a join at the terminal part or lower end thereof. In other words, splitting is voluntarily limited to the major part of the carcass without, however, attaining the whole, in order to avoid having two separate half-carcasses.
Such is the case, for example, when the carcass is suspended from the conveyor via a support of the pendular type presenting only one articulation for a single suspension hanger, at the ends of the arms of which the rear legs of the carcass are fixed.
In such a configuration, a total split produces two half-carcasses which make an uncontrollable pendular movement having a detrimental effect on the stability procured by the suspension member.
In such a case, which is given only by way of illustration, it is clear that it is necessary, in order to maintain stability and subsequent take-up, to split the carcass only over the major part thereof, leaving a join at the lower end.
It should be considered that this lower end may be the animal's head if this part remains, or the lower terminal part of the spine if the head has been removed.
In either case, the same requirement is imperative.
The presently known methods and devices for automatically splitting an animal carcass do not respond to this requirement and do not enable the split to be interrupted at a determined distance from the lower end of the animal, due to rapid presentation with a relatively high frequency of succession and the necessity to take into account the random position of the lower end of each carcass, which depends on the length of the slaughtered animal.
The need has therefore been felt in industrial slaughter-houses having to comply with such a requirement, to have available means for making an automatic split limited to a distance from the lower end of the suspended carcass, adopting a high work rate and acting entirely automatically, whatever the length of the carcasses arriving at the intervention station.
It is an object of the present invention to respond to such a need.