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    Air

    How do we separate potatoes (or carrots or onions) from foreign materials to see every defect? We do it ‘in-flight.' Air Handling gives TOMRA sensors the ability to complete a very thorough and precise inspection of every potato, onion, or carrot while also detecting foreign material and unsafe produce.

    Why air handling is perfect for whole vegetables

    Why does a lumpy, uneven vegetable suit air inspection so well?

    It’s the potato’s mass, shape, and motion.

    Potatoes and other similarly shaped and weighted products maybe be asymmetrical, but the mass compared to their size allows inertia so they can travel.

    Because of the potato’s uneven shape, the air resistance around the product fluctuates, which means it doesn’t fall straight, like a tomato or a berry. Similarly, it’s heavy mass compared to its size means inertia sends it flying further than other vegetables.

    What’s more, air handling allows for very high capacity sorting and enables the removal of large foreign material

    The result: a potato gives the time and perspective for a thorough and precise inspection without creating interference with the sensors.

    Why choose Air handling

    Combine high capacity with practical durability
    Sort up to 100 tons per hour with maximum uptime and a long service lifetime. By its nature, the Air portfolio requires fewer moving parts, so your machines can keep up with your business. 
    Minimal loss with dual-sided inspection
    A dual sided inspection of every object combined with machine learning-powered processing delivers expert foreign material detection whether the product is dirty, dry, washed, or peeled. 
    Unlock high-performance sorting
    Dive in deep into every product’s detailed size, geometry, shape, color, subtle blemishes, and damage, and set your tolerances with machine-learning powered processing and TOMRA’s finger reject system. Keep the good product while discarding the bad and eliminating foreign material. 

    Watch the Air portfolio at work

    Working principles for the Air portfolio

    TOMRA 3A

    Potatoes are loaded onto the entire width of the conveyor and progress towards the inspection area. Air inspection ensures every single potato is inspected. While in the air, the potatoes are scanned by Pulsed LED sensors and cameras. A few milliseconds later, high speed ejection fingers remove the foreign material and defective products to the reject conveyor. The good products continue to a soft landing on the next conveyor. 

     

    A visual explanation of how the TOMRA 3A sorts potatoes from infeed to sensing to ejection streams

     

    TOMRA 5A

    The produce is spread uniformly onto the infeed belt and is scanned in air by cameras on both sides. A few milliseconds later, the defects are rejected by intelligent finger ejectors, positioned on the end of the infeed belt, while the good produce continues its way along the sorting line.

    The following visual explains:

    An explanation of the TOMRA 5A working principle from infeed to grading

    A) Infeed

    B) Sensors

    C) Intelligent ejection fingers

    During the inspection the peel removal quality is also measured and analyzed by the optional peel control module. In case of significant differences between the measured quality and the customer-specific settings, the peeler settings are automatically adjusted

     

     

    Explore the TOMRA Air portfolio

    Learn more about associated technologies