Licorice Cutter, Hershey Foods Corp.

This post looks at an older patent, awarded to Hershey Foods Corp on July 8th 1986. It describes a device to cut long strips of licorice into 1-inch bite sized pieces.

Fig. 1 gives a bird's eye view of the device, with long strips of licorice (20) entering the device from the left. They pass between the two rollers seen in Fig. 2.

The upper roller is fitted with blades that cut the licorice as it passes through. The pieces are then ejected by rods (50) actuated by a cam (62).

This clever invention makes use of the way blades mounted on a cylinder have a widening gap as radius increases to allow the licorice pieces to be pushed out easily. Yum.