Fish-Dressing Machine

a device used for the mechanical dismembering of the fish carcass without altering the physicochemical composition of the raw material being processed. Fish-dressing machines perform the following operations: removal of the head and fins, opening of the abdominal cavity, gutting, sectioning, and filleting. The basic process—cutting—is carried out by fixed or rotating blades.

In terms of design, fish-dressing machines are divided into conveyor, rotary, and drum types. In some machines the fish are placed crosswise or longitudinally on the delivery conveyor. There are different machines for dressing small, medium-size, and large fish. The IRM-3 fish-dressing machine (USSR), which was designed to process fresh Baltic herring, processes as many as 200 fish a minute; two groups of fish (80–120 mm long and 120–160 mm long) can be dressed on the machine. The IRM–3 machine can operate on a ship with a list of ±10° and a trim of ±3°. The IR2-S fish-dressing machine (USSR) can process 20 to 24 cods (350–660 mm long) per minute.

A promising direction in the development of fish-dressing equipment is the production of universal multiple-operation machines having interchangeable assemblies based on single-operation devices and attachments.