Optical Sorter

The optical food sorting machine is the most technologically advanced sorting machine using visual inspection of the fruit or vegetables. The industrial optical sorter is ideal for commercial food processing or packaging operations companies to select produce in one step. The direct feed of the feed stream aligns the products so the optical sorter can simultaneously identify product coloration, size, shape, defects and other characteristics. The decisive advantage of the optical sorter is the high quality of produce selection and high processing rate. The technological advances have allowed Marcelissen to optimize each sorting unit to the specific fruit or vegetable. The team customize the installed sorting equipment according to the client’s operation, technical requirements and specific fruit or vegetable.

Optical Sorter – SOL/SOM

Marcelissen’s Optical Sorter grades the fruit and vegetable according to various characteristics: namely size, color, number of defects and size of the defects.

Advantages of optical sorter:

• Non-contact and gentle sorting mechanism
• Constant very precise selection
• Constant quality and quantity processing rate
• Eliminates manual or mechanical pre-grading
• Food grade design and automated operation

The fruit and vegetables are transported by conveyor into the sorting chamber on two separate roller conveyors. Within the optical sorter the evaluation is concluded in the scan space where the vegetable is selected in view of the quality, characteristics, and possible defects. The optical vegetable sorter concludes 360 degrees scan of the vegetable ensuring complete surface control. The high speed optical sorter ensures this by rotating the vegetables several times on the transportation section under the camera.

After the data from the fruit and vegetable has been collected, the optical grader proceeds to sort the fresh produce according to the programmed criteria. The automatic vegetable sorter use ‘blow nozzles’ or ‘sliders’ to direct each individual vegetable to the collection or transport units. The optical sorter parameters are pre-programmed based on the previously obtained information, consisting of issues such as quality and produce characteristics. The vegetable optical sorter achieves high volumes with best selection quality.

Economic benefits:

• Maximize fruit or vegetable usage
• Minimize operational labor
• Maximum processing rate
• Complete design and control