The small end of the Sublon line: development work, pilot batches and small production, on the same engineering logic as the plant-scale systems. A lab machine that behaves differently from the production machine is a lab machine that teaches you the wrong cycle.
The point of a lab dryer is not to make small batches. It is to produce a cycle recipe that survives being scaled up.
That only works if the small system shares the production system’s thermal behaviour — the same shelf-contact physics, the same relationship between condenser capacity and removal rate. Buy a lab machine built on different principles and every number you learn on it has to be re-learned at scale, which is the most expensive way to discover a cycle.
Loading depth is the usual trap. A tray loaded 8mm deep in the lab and 25mm deep in production is not the same product, thermally, and no amount of shelf-temperature staging fixes the difference after the fact.
Three distinct jobs, and the sizing conversation is different for each.
Cycle development. Freeze rate, pretreatment, shelf staging and where primary drying ends — established on your actual material and handed over as a recipe.
Small commercial production. Real output for a product still finding its volume, without committing to plant-scale capital.
Proving a product. Sensory, rehydration, shelf life and pack format, on material a customer can actually evaluate.
These are facts, and they get published per configuration as each is released.
Per-model configuration detail for the benchtop and lab class — shelf area, shelf count and spacing, condenser ice capacity, refrigeration and vacuum specification, electrical service and footprint. [SPEC — Nick to confirm]
What will not appear here, on this page or any other: pounds per batch, cycle time, or throughput. Those depend on your product, and a number that is right for sliced fruit is wrong for a high-fat treat.
Scale, and nothing else that should matter. A lab system exists to produce a cycle recipe that survives scale-up, so it has to share the production system’s thermal behaviour. If it does not, everything you learn on it has to be re-learned later.
Small production, yes. The honest limit is water load per cycle against the demand you need to meet. Run your numbers on the sizing calculator and the answer is arithmetic rather than opinion.