6 replies to this topic

[rlped]

Hi, we've got a new (to us) rondo sheeter sso-64 floor model, We're trying to make a lavash style cracker. Having trouble getting the dough to be very very thin (a setting of 1/2 - 3/4 is our target). We used to use a pasta roller on a kitchenaid but the volume was slow.

When we get the sheeter setting down below 1 the leading edge follows the edge of the belt as there is a small gap between the metal edge of the scraper and the belt. We've tried laying the front edge on parchment (silpat is too thick) it helps but that takes a lot of time - lifting the safety guard, feeding the paper in the rollers...still not awhat we'd hoped for.

Appreciate any tips.

[Creola]

Are you saying it is riding the edge of the belt? You have a floor model reversible model right?If you could explain a little more I could check with my husband as we have a reversible sheeter.

[rlped]

Thanks for responding.

When the dough (a leavened hi-gluten dough) gets quite thin (gap setting at 1 or less) as the leading edge of the dough gets to the rollers it does not have enough stiffness and curves down just in front of the metal edge of the scraper. There is a gap of about 3/16th of an inch and the dough drops in. It is not sticking to the belt, the dough is not sticky. This is a Rondo reversible floor sheeter, It has a variable speed dial, a sheeting speed and a cutting speed, and the handle that reverses the belts has two positions, one where the speed of each belt is different, and one where the speeds are ( I think, from what I've read) the same. It is about 10- years old.

[Creola]

Maybe don't run it all the way through , stop and reverse it . ?

[rlped]

After a few weeks of fooling around we finally bought a couple of full sheet silpats. We put the sheet between those for the final run, that gets it pretty thin.

[rlped]

Update -- it turns out after a LOT of frustrating cracker experiments that our sheeter needed repair.  When I bought this used sheeter I did not know that the thickness adjuster was also a magnetic brake that kept the rollers from widening when dough passed through.  Turns out that the magnetic coil was broken.  Even though I had a 90 day warranty on the equipment, it took me longer than that to figure out that there was more than my inexperience at work.  Now fixed and crackers are coming along.  Still practicing.  

[Syzygies]

Update -- it turns out after a LOT of frustrating cracker experiments that our sheeter needed repair.

 

I was guessing this. I was once mountain biking in a park above Berkeley, and this guy had gotten his pickup truck up this impossible hill, so he could set a $10,000, six foot high contraption on a geological marker. Turns out, if two GPS devices talk to each other, and one knows exactly where it is, the other can deduce amazingly accurate readings. They were laying out some kind of factory down below, other side of the hills. He was a surveyor; the days of leaning over tripods are over.

 

I asked him about other work he did, and he described using exactly the same skills to lay out giant newspaper printing presses. Turns out there's a speed at which the newsprint simply tears, and that speed depends on the alignment. Perfect alignment is an unobtainable ideal; one gets as close as one can.

 

So there's no right or wrong, no "threshold for perfection" in your sheeter. Lucky for you it can be repaired. The better it is aligned and tuned, the better it will perform.