The Britannia Company offers a range of machinery for cutting the extruded soap bar exiting from the final plodder. The bar can be either cut into billets for presentation to the Stamping machine or into blocks of finished laundry soap. All our machines are automatic and are offered as either fixed billet sized knives or variable billet adjustable knives.

The Britannia Varimax Soap Cutter cuts an extruded soap bar into billets with a new order of accuracy. The metal cutting chain links are cut by laser to a high degree of precision, to give soap bars which are accurate in length and exhibit a clean, square finish.
 

The Britannia Varimax Soap Cutter is a solidly constructed machine using all steel fabricated parts for the supports and framework. This gives an extremely stable machine completely free from twisting or distortion, and guarantees the maximum accuracy of cut.

The cutter supports are solid steel to completely eliminate flexing, and they are cut to accurate tolerances by high technology lasers.

The articulating drive links are specially fabricated aluminium metal to combine high strength with light weight and correspondingly low inertia. This permits the cutting chain to respond immediately to change of speed in the extruding soap bar without any tendency to distort or drag the soap.

The cutting machine, for incorporation into high speed, fully automatic manufacturing lines, uses a brand new and unique drive system that is the best available. Variable speed is provided by an adjustable voltage direct current motor which uses positive feedback to maintain precise velocity settings.
 
Variable torque is provided by a manually adjustable clutch type coupling where the variation in soap hardness can be compensated for by an adjustable control.

It is possible to “slave” together the plodder, cutter and stamper to all run at exactly the same speed for fully automatic production.

We offer an alternative design of drive system where it is not considered desirable to tally automate the manufacturing line. The Varimax (air) is driven by a pneumatic motor working off compressed air. By varying the air pressure it is possible to vary the speed and torque of the cutting chain.
 
The cutting chain head on both systems is variable for angle so that extra thick billets can be cut with true accuracy.

The fixed type cutting machine is the most economically priced unit and the cutting chain is mounted on a light weight support frame. If it is required to change the size of the cut billet then it is necessary to stop the machine and unscrew the cutting assembly. This is then manually lifted off the alternative size of cutting chain is bolted into place. This operation requires no skill and occupies about 10 minutes. The extra chain sizes are specially prepared to the clients specified dimensions.
 

The standard cutting range is 65mm to 110mm but it is permissible to remove blades to vary the cutting length.

For instance, if every alternate blade is removed from the standard chain then the 65mm to 110mm becomes 130mm to 220mm if only every third blade is left in place, then the standard chain will adjust between 195mm and 330mm.