The University of Alaska Fairbanks has a new bone removal machine receiving patents.
Larry Kozycki invented the Pinbone Wizard in the 1990’s. But when Kozycki died in 2001, the manager of the Geophysical Machine Shop at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Greg Shipman took over the development. Shipman says when he is current developer but Kozycki was the brains behind the original prototype.
“The way the machine works is the guts of the machine are a series of opposing discs that are each handed about 5 degrees and when they come together it’s almost like a pair of needle nose plyers that pulls the bone. And because this whole assembly rotates, when it rotates at 90 degrees at top dead center, it then releases the bone to be flushed away in a trough and then back around again to pick the new set of bones. This is just a continuous action at roughly 220 RPM.”
Shipman says the original prototype was only designed to remove bones from red salmons. However, he and his group of engineers have worked to consolidate the machine. The Pinbone Wizard is 22 inches by 16 inches by 13 inches. Shipman says it was made to be portable so local commercial fisherman can use it on their boats or larger production companies can set it up in their factories. The versatile machine has worked on fish as small as trout and as big as king salmon.
Although the Pinbone Wizard isn’t yet available for mass production but those who are interested in buying a machine can contact the University of Alaska Office of Intellectual Properities and Commercialization.