Meat Processing
The Automated Boning Room
Scott's vision is to develop a fully automated boning room system that will take a hanging carcass and produce the most optimal set of meat products. Work began towards this goal in 2001 with the development of the world's first hindquarter boning robot. The primal cutter, X-ray and forequarter systems followed over subsequent years. Scott is now proud to be able to offer the market a fully automated system for processing bone in lamb product.
We don't plan to stop here. Scott continues to develop new lamb boning room products that will offer value to processors by automating other boning operations and improving management.
Scott offers its products either as standalone machines, or as integrated systems that can automate the transfer of product between machines.





X-Ray Primal System
The X-ray primal system can produce the primal cuts from a carcass including forequarter, middle, loin and hindquarter at a rate of up to 12 carcases per minute.
The system uses an X-ray camera to scan the skeletal structure of the carcass, identify the most profitable cut positions, then cut the carcass to within 2mm of accuracy. The cuts are made with two counter rotating circular blades which create no saw dust. Not only does this eliminate band saw waste but it is considerably more accurate than a band saw operator, so that loin and rack yield is maximised.
The X-ray system can also be configured to provide real time measurement of the yield from each primal, making it possible to optimise product management from more than just carcass weight.
Middle System
The middle system is comprised of several stations that can be configured according to the customer's requirements. The stations conduct the following operations:
- Removing Spinal Cord: The middle is automatically loaded into the machine which locates the spinal cord holes at either end of the saddle section then, with a combination of vacuum and compressed air, removes spinal cord materials to a vessel.
- Splitting Station: This splits the loin from the rack and features a yield maximising scallop cut which can't be performed by a band saw operator. There is no band saw waste.
- Flap Cutting: Flaps are accurately removed to the precise distance specified from the edge of the eye meat. The distance from the eye meat is automatically measured for each saddle.
- Chining: This chine bones the rack saddle, with cutting blades adjusted according to the size of each individual rack. Automatic adjustment here can add up to 5 grams of yield per carcass.
- Splitting: The rack saddle is split perfectly down the spinal cord hole.
Forequarter System
The forequarter system is made up of a robotic arm which grasps the forequarter, and processes neck chops, knuckle tip, shank, atlas and vertebra split. Cut accuracy is higher than can be achieved with a human band saw operator and it removes the safety hazard involved with band saw operation.
Hindquarter System
The hindquarter system uses a robotic arm to automatically cut the leg from the aitch bone. This system achieves consistently higher yields than is possible with manual boning.
Knuckle Tipper
The knuckle tipper automatically removes the knuckle tip from the hind leg. This product removes a dangerous band saw operation from the boning room, improves yield, and provides a high quality bevelled cut on the bone.




