Patent ID: 8367131

Claim:
A method of monitoring breaking of eggs in a cyclic process, where eggs are fed to a plurality of egg breaking devices by means of a feeder, each egg breaking device receiving one egg having shell and contents at a time, where the shell of each egg is broken by means of the respective egg breaking device and the contents of each egg are collected in an egg receiving device, each egg receiving device receiving the contents of only one egg in each process cycle, and where remains held by each egg breaking device after the breaking of the eggshell and the collection of the contents are discharged to a waste receptacle and the contents of the egg receiving device are discharged into one or more product receptacles, said method including the steps of: for each process cycle, establishing an egg received status for each respective one of the egg breaking devices using a feed sensor, said status being either actual reception of an egg from the feeder or no reception of an egg from the feeder, said status being established prior to breaking of the egg, automatically registering the presence of at least one of the conditions (a)-(c) for each of the egg breaking devices, respectively, based on an output of each egg breaking device after breaking of the egg and said status of each egg breaking device established by the feed sensor, the conditions (a)-(c) including: (a) egg is dropped, (b) eggshell is unbroken or (c) yolk membrane is broken, and presenting the presence of an abnormality in the egg-breaking to an operator based on the registered condition.