Optical Sorter Mechanical – SOM

The Optical Sorting Mechanical machine is specially developed for the optical grading of peeled and unpeeled potatoes on defects, colour, size, shape and waste. This machine consists of a dosing unit, a roller belt, a camera unit and an ejection zone with the following exits. Due to the hygienic design and positioning of the cameras inside the machine, the product can be inspected 360 degrees without lens contamination occurring in the camera zone.

An innovative aspect of our Optical Sorter is the fact that it extends both good and bad product by means of flippers and allows product that needs to be peeled again to run straight through. This way of working means that no bad product can end up in the good product stream.

The following distribution of the exits is used for grading the potatoes. Attention: this distribution of exits is not fixed but is a first estimation and can always be changed according to the customer’s wishes.

Exits in the basic setup:
– Exit 1: Good product
– Exit 2: Waste / Bad product
– Overflow: Double and repeel

It can always happen that a potato is missed. In this case, this missed potato goes to the overflow and thereby back to the repeel.

Concerning the cleaning of the rollers, the Optical Sorting Machine is equipped with a spraying system on the return part of the roller belt, which sprays the rollers continuously. With this spraying system, it is possible to spray from above as well as below for optimal cleaning. The washing unit is closed to ensure that, at this section, there won’t be any water on the floor. All the water is drained downwards via 1 drain. This is done in the form of a drip tray underneath the entire washing unit of the Optical Sorting Machine.

Capacity
108.000 potatoes/hour, based on a speed of 15 cups/sec and a filling grade of 100%. At a filling grade of 80% and an average weight of 100 gr/pcs, the total capacity is ca. 8640 kg/hr. At an average weight of 35 gr/pcs, the total capacity is ca. 3024 kg/hr.