Updates to the high-performance Visar Sortop Carrot optical sorter are bringing increased throughput, accuracy and quality to carrot sorting operations worldwide. As UK distributor of the Swiss-manufactured optical carrot and potato sorting machine, leading UK vegetable handling equipment manufacturer Tong Engineering is pleased to highlight the Visar Sortop update to growers and producers throughout the UK.
“Creating efficiencies across the vegetable handling process, particularly in replacing traditional sorting methods with the latest optical sorting facilities continues to be a real focus for vegetable producers,” explains Simon Lee, Sales Director at Tong Engineering. “As an experienced optical sorting integration partner, we are dedicated to supplying our customers with the most suitable and advanced optical sorting solutions for their specific requirements, and the latest developments to the Visar Sortop will certainly ensure the machine is an increasingly viable option for significantly reducing labour requirements whilst improving crop yield and reducing waste.”
The Visar Sortop carrot and potato optical sorter uses intelligent optical sorting technology based upon a 360-degree mirror system and HD camera for great accuracy at speed. It is designed to accept any form of carrot and potato, even one that is highly twisted, and can detect defects to the nearest millimetre or gram.
One of the key updates to the Visar Sortop carrot sorter, is a new software featuring infrared vision, which increases the accuracy of defect detection such as rotten, damaged or mouse-gnawed crowns. In particular, the new infrared vision has improved the machine’s vision of carrot crowns and tips where defects can commonly occur. In addition, the new software has a simplified user interface that controls the machine’s automatic and progressive learning of which defects are acceptable or not. The precise adjustment of quality parameters is now even easier for the operator and instant statistics on production and batch quality are now also easily available. With the new machine, 16 customisable outlets are available for maximum flexibility.
Alongside the updates to the machine’s software, the Visar Sortop has a new infeed system which brings a highly increased hourly sorting capacity. Built upon a unique design, the new feeding system features a simple and ingenious rotating system which cleverly and smoothly aligns carrots of all sizes into a singular orientation, for perfect infeed to the optical sorter without any duplicates. This new infeed systems means that an impressive 1.8m of lined-up carrots can be viewed per second.
“The updates to the Visar not only mean the machine is more user-friendly than ever before, but the detection capabilities of the machine have advanced even further whilst throughput has increased significantly with the introduction of the new infeed system,” says Simon. “One of our UK customers who has been operating a series of Visar Sortop carrot sorters for several years has recently upgraded the infeed system to the new design and has seen a noticeable increase in throughput. We are excited to discuss the new advancements with carrot growers throughout the UK so they can see how an advanced optical sorting machine can dramatically reduce the labour costs whilst increasing the consistency and quality of their sorting operations.”
For more information on the Visar Sortop and optical sorting of all types of vegetables, don’t hesitate to get in touch with the Sales Team at Tong Engineering.