Tomato sorter using cameras and timed rejection arms to bat away unripe produce. from r/interestingasfuck
Having worked in tomato harvesting for multiple summers in my youth, I can tell you that these gizmos were mounted on the harvester, and would also remove dirt clods, trash and anything else that wasn't a ripe tomato right at the field as the tomatoes were being harvested.
The machine shines a weird light on the tomatoes just as they are coming off the belt, and a sensor notes which objects are not reflecting back exactly like a perfectly ripe tom. If it doesn't look just right, a little bar pops them off the falling curtain of tomatoes and back onto the field, or into a bin.
Simple, but very effective.
I thought they just had a coupla old Italian Grandmothers to do that...
ReplyDeleteJoe
https://theviewfromladylake.blogspot.com/
Another salary saved.
ReplyDeleteLong, long ago I took a summer job at a bottling plant. My job was to sit there and look at each bottle as it passed in front of a light bar. The light bar gave background light which aided me and seven others to visibly check for damage or defects on the empty bottles prior to filling.
DeleteAfter a week I wanted to shoot myself, having never been so bored. Long time workers were often calling out with severe eyestrain and the attendant headaches. And the bottling line moved at a snail's pace compared to now with the electronic eye. Some jobs just never should be.
My older brother helped design these systems. The optical systems are very precise. Not only did they use albedo, they used dimensions as measure of tolerance. Obvious, for tomatoes, dimension cannot be used due to the varying shape of the fruit.
ReplyDeleteEverything, from bottling to gauging the fit of the plastic seal on jars of food products to raw fruit and vegetables now use these high speed systems.
have a friend that owns a Lima Bean plant. They use an electronic screening machine that takes out an individual bean with a blast of air. The thing is quick.
ReplyDeleteThose machines are called "color sorters" and can even be made to work with grains of rice, so what you see in the little bag of rice (or whatever) is uniform in appearance.
DeleteThis post and your trip to Crater Lake bring back memories. I went to high school in Tulelake. In my younger days, I was well familiar with Hwy 97, then hanging a right at State Line Road (161). At the intersection of 161 and 39,there used to be a potato packing shed where I had my first summer job earning a paycheck.
ReplyDeleteThey had an electronic potato size sorter. The spuds slid in a single line down a chute onto a conveyor which was essentially two belts of surgical tubing running parallel about an inch and a half apart. They would lay on their long axis, then pass through a light beam. Breaking the light beam measured them for size. Further down the belt, rubber trip hammers tapped the spuds off the belt according to size, where they slid down another chute and into a box. IIRC, each box was 20 lbs., and there were four sizes.
My job was to switch out the full boxes for empty ones. The boxes were pre-printed and I had to circle the appropriate size. I slid a top on each full box, then stacked them according to size. When a stack had five boxes, I used a dolly to roll the stack out to the loading dock.
That was the summer of '69.
Aren’t they going to taste different, without the illegals pizzing on them?
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