CT3™ Texture Analyzer

This application note examines a compression test on a food container with the CT3 Texture Analyzer.

Research has shown that the texture of a food product determines and influences both customer selection and preference. The desired texture also affects the processing and handling procedures in the preparation of food products. Hence, consistently replicating the optimum texture for any individual food product is crucial for success.

Cheese is made from curd by coagulating the casein in milk. The type of curd that develops depends upon the handling techniques, moisture content and aging durations. Texture analysis plays an integral part in the development of low fat products where a developer may want to mimic the textural profile of a product’s full-fat counterpart. In this application note, the CT3 Texture Analyzer was used with a cylinder probe to determine the consistencies and firmness of soft cheese.

This application note evaluates the hardness of dry cooked beans by bulk compression. The compression test is a common method used to measure the force required to cause sample failure, characterizing the hardness of a sample.

The penetration test used in this application measures the firmness of vegetable burgers and can be used as a QC and R&D tool to optimize the texture of the product and ensure consistency in production. Using the multiple punch assembly, the burger can be tested simultaneously at multiple sites giving an average measurement of the firmness of the burger.

This application note describes a method for the evaluation of hardness of a premium brand and budget brand potato chips by bulk compression. The CT3 Texture Analyzer and the Ottawa cell are used to assess the textural qualities of crisps. Weighed samples are placed into an Ottawa cell and compressed by a plunger at a given speed and hardness is determined by the maximum force. The method finds that the budget chips are twice as hard and less brittle in comparison to the premium chips.

Filling consumer containers is one of the major operations in most food plants that process liquid and semisolid food products. Experience oftentimes is the guiding force in deciding what will work best. Various food materials, such as peanut butter and jam, are good examples of everyday products that must have predictable flow behavior to work properly during the fill operation. Now there is a way to predict flow behavior with some simple testing beforehand.

This application note demonstrates the texture profile analysis of two commercially available Madeira cakes during deformation, measuring a number of parameters including hardness, springiness and chewiness. The CT3 Texture Analyzer was used to analyze the samples at 3 different levels of deformation − 25%, 50% and 75% − imposed using a cylindrical Perspex probe.

Soft gels are widely used in medicines, vitamin and mineral supplements, fragrances and cosmetics. The active ingredients are packaged inside a capsule or microcapsule protecting it from its surrounding environment until an appropriate time when the ingredients escape from the capsule wall by rapture, dissolution, melting or diffusion. The CT3 Texture Analyzer is a low cost, but powerful, universal testing machine that offers both compression and tensile testing and is used in this application note to evaluate soft gel capsule quality.

Compression testing is a common method in food testing for measuring the force required for sample failure, with a high force characterizing a hard sample, as it is important to fully understand the properties of a food item when considering packaging and shipping. In this application note, the hardness of cooked dry lentils was measured using the CT3 Texture Analyzer from Brookfield Engineering.

This video demonstrates the analysis of biopolymer adhesion to mucosal membrane using Brookfield’s Mucoadhesion Accessory and CT3 Texture Analyzer.

Watch this video to learn how the measure the force required to peel the coating of a pharmaceutical tablet using the Brookfield CT3 Texture Analyzer.

This video demonstrates how the CT3 can measure the rupture force of a film material.

This video demonstrates how to measure the consistency of shampoo using the Back Extrusion Test.

Watch this video to learn how to measure the cake strength of compacted powder. Demonstrated using eyeshadow.

This video demonstration shows how to measure the spreadability of viscous and semi-solid materials using the Brookfield CT3 Texture Analyzer and TA-SF on a moisturizing cream sample.

This video demonstrates the Raft Hook to measure the strength of an alginate raft, the using the CT3.

This video explains how to uses the CT3 Eye Pencil Fixture to measure the hardness of eyeliner and liplining tips.

Watch this video to learn how to use the CT3 to measure the force required to extract a tablet from a blister pack.