Shortly after this meeting, T&T was hired to relocate the oven, correct the oven combustion and build a new control panel. By the time we started this work, the maintenance manager had left the company.

While our installation teams were working on the oven relocation in Denver, back in Chicago, our electrical engineers designed and built new burner zone controls, updated the gas train safety components for this two tower oven, and built a new main oven control panel.

In late 2019 we started up the oven as shown in the accompanying photos.

The customer reports the APV oven is operating very well with baking quality and product consistency greatly improved, and temperature controllability from the new oven controls and HMI simplified. The oven is operating with the latest NFPA approved safety systems.

LESSON LEARNED: ONLY BAKERY OVEN EXPERTS SHOULD WORK ON BAKERY OVENS AND COMBUSTION SYSTEMS

“THERE MAY BE A STORY HERE TO LEARN FROM…”

T&T started a longstanding relationship with this Denver customer in 2002. At the time, the bakery produced a very special large size cookie, baking them in rack ovens. They were looking for an automated baking line, improved baking quality and consistency, which the rack ovens did not provide for the product.

T&T located and offered a 2 tower 1 meter x 80ft Warner Le Hara cookie band oven, completely remanufactured, upgraded and turn key installed in a 20,000 sq ft new bakery location.

The photos show the original oven in place, the remanufacture and installation progress in the new space, and the start up and production of product. The project was successful and the customer’s business grew as a result.

In 2013 the customer asked us to relocate this baking line to their new 300,000 sq ft facility. T&T successfully completed the relocation and upgraded the combustion and safety system on the oven to meet current codes. The new bakery expanded their product line and they purchased additional baking lines.

In 2016, T&T was hired to install a used APV model 1 meter x 100 ft 2 tower cookie baking oven the customer had purchased.  T&T again did the installation and upgrades  to the two combustion chambers on this oven. T&T also quoted the upgrade of the original APV electric and combustion safety controls.

However, the bakery had grown and a new management team was in place. They wanted to save money and decided it would be more cost effective to hire a local company to do the work instead of incurring the costs associated with bringing a baking oven expert from the Midwest to work on their baking oven controls. At that time they started working with local burner companies and electrical control builders for their baking ovens.

Around 2016, T&T received a phone call that the very first Warner Le Hara tunnel oven exploded. One of the towers on the oven blew up. The owner called us directly to explain that they hired a local gas company to upsize the gas regulators to the burners. This local gas compnay installed the new regulators and over the weekend their maintenance was trying to fire up the burners. After several tries the oven tower blew up due to residual gas build up in the combustion chamber. Luckily, there were no serious injurires.

We asked if anyone from their engineering department requested a qualified burner company to retune the burners for the new gas regulators. The owner’s response was no.

And there lies the problem.   In every scenario like this, a qualified and trained baking oven burner tech should be called to retune and adjust the burners before start up.

Over the years, T&T has done multiple asset damage recovery assessments on behalf of large North American insurance companies as a result of bakeries experiencing baking oven explosions, or bakeries that burned down in the US and abroad for various reasons.

In 2005, T&T was contacted by a large US insurance company about a cookie baking line damage assessment. The European built Polin baking line experienced damage due to an employee dropping a very large oil storage crate from a fork lift truck while attempting to place it on a platform above. The oil went all over the cookie wirecut, the main electrical control panel and into the tunnel oven.

The insurance company, having found us through our website, hired T&T to bring the line back to the operating condition it was in before the damage occurred. The Polin cookie wire cut and baking line was in a very bad shape as shown in the before photos. We had no documentation on the system and the OEM wanted no part of helping us, because they wanted to sell a new line to the customer.

As a testament to T&T‘s never give up attitude, we knew we could make this line work again.

As seen in the after photos, in 2006-07 we started the line back up with the insurance company rep present for the run-off. The bakery’s management told us the line never ran this well. We received sign off and full payment for the project from the insurance company. 

A few years later, T&T reached out to the bakery owner and asked if he was interested in selling the Polin cookie baking line to us. We had a potential buyer for it. We made a deal and T&T sold and installed the same line to a cookie baker on the West Coast that was expanding and building a new facility.

T&T relocated and reinstalled the oven for the new owners in 2014 and they have been making great cookies on it ever since.