Analysis of a Reciprocating Panel Fruit Lowering Device

Rehkugler, G. E.; Millier, W. F.; Pellerin, R. A.; Throop, J. A.

doi:10.13031/2013.35960

Cited by 2 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…The bin fillers developed by Kliethermes et al (2010) and and O'Brien (1967, 1969, are likely to have non-uniform distribution issues, and thus may not be suitable for practical adoption. To improve fruit distributions, it is common to use the design of bin movement (i.e., reciprocating, spinning, or tilting) in commercial bin fillers and experimental prototypes (Rehkugler et al, 1976;Peterson and Wolford, 2002;Van Wijngaarden and Weterings, 2004;Munckholf, 2016). This design approach is, however, not desirable for infield use because it could pose safety hazards to workers and also would need extra space to accommodate the bin movement.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As filling is going on, the fruit in the bin push the exit gates up, which activates a micro switch to lower the spinning bin automatically, so as to keep a constant distance between the exit gates and the apple level in the bin. Millier et al (1973), Rehkugler et al (1976, and Millier The grabber bin filler consists of a conveyor, a roll, two crank mechanisms, and two vertical plates. The roll catches apples from the end of the conveyor, and then drops them into the gap between the two vertical plates row-by-row.…”

Section: Prototypementioning

confidence: 99%

“…When the sensing plate is pushed by an increased apple level in the bin, an actuator is activated to push the bin filler upward. Powell (1978) updated this invention: (1) being portable; (2) eliminating bin spinning; and (3) feeding head oscillation to assist with uniform fruit distributions. The portable feature makes it convenient to be used as an independent unit at any needed locations.…”

Section: Prototypementioning

confidence: 99%

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A Review of Bin Filling Technologies for Apple Harvest and Postharvest Handling

Zhang¹,

Pothula²,

Lu³

2018

Applied Engineering in Agriculture

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Bin fillers play a critical role in transporting and distributing fruit evenly and without bruising into individual bins or containers from harvest platforms infield or sorting lines in the packinghouse. Over the years, a large variety of bin fillers have been developed for infield use and postharvest handling. This article reviews different bin filling technologies in terms of major design features, performance, and throughput, as well as automatic control and safety features. For infield use, bin filler designs have evolved from the early use of conveyors and reciprocating plates to recent adoption of soft pads and foam rollers, to reduce bruising and improve fruit distributions. For postharvest use, tilted bins and conveyors commonly used with early bin fillers have been replaced with hinged trays and vacuum suction cups for fruit transport and cylinder brushes and swingable dividers for bruise prevention. While many types of bin fillers have been developed, few are suitable for infield use because it imposes more constraints than postharvest use. Despite the use of automatic sensing and control in most bin fillers, human assistance is still needed during their operation. There are still major issues with the current bin fillers, such as large size, complexity in design, uneven fruit distributions, and low throughput. Further effort should, therefore, be directed towards the development of high throughput, simple yet reliable, compact and fully automated, or even intelligent bin fillers for infield and postharvest use.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Prototypementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Prototypementioning

confidence: 99%

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A Review of Bin Filling Technologies for Apple Harvest and Postharvest Handling

Zhang¹,

Pothula²,

Lu³

2018

Applied Engineering in Agriculture

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“…The bin filler developed by Zhang et al (2014Zhang et al ( , 2016a and Zhang and Heinemann (2017) also uses the pinwheel design concept, but it is only suitable for two pickers at a throughput of no more than 2 apples s -1 , which cannot meet the throughput of 6 fruit s -1 required by the HIS machine. However, most in-field bin fillers are based on the bin rotating design, which has been used with the Cornell harvester (Millier et al, 1973;Rehkugler et al, 1976), the Pluk-O-Trak machine (Munckhof, 2016), the Revo harvest system (Revo S.R.L., Cavareno, Italy), and the USDA-ARS apple harvest-assist platform (Peterson and Wolford, 2002, 2003a, 2003b. These bin fillers could present some safety concerns when operated in the field, considering that each bin weighs about 400 kg when fully filled.…”

Section: Current Status Of Bin Filling Technologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Development and Preliminary Evaluation of a New Bin Filler for Apple Harvesting and In-Field Sorting Machine

Zhang¹,

Pothula²,

Lu³

2017

Transactions of the ASABE

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Abstract. The bin filler, which is used for filling the fruit container or bin with apples coming from the sorting system, plays a critical role in the self-propelled apple harvest and in-field sorting (HIS) machine that is being developed in our laboratory. Two major technical challenges in developing the bin filler are limited space in the HIS machine and high throughput. A literature review showed that despite many different types of bin fillers currently available for in-field use, none of them is suitable for the HIS machine because of their large size, use of the bin rotating design concept, and high unit cost. Effort has thus been made on the development of new bin filling technology for use with the HIS machine. The new bin filler mainly consists of a mechanical system with a pinwheel design and an automatic control system. A key innovation in the mechanical system is the use of two foam rollers to catch freely falling apples, which has greatly simplified the bin filler design and also made the system compact and lower in cost. The control system is mainly composed of an onboard Arduino microcontroller and three sensors (one infrared sensor and two Hall effect sensors) to monitor and measure the status of apples filling the bin as well as the rotational speed of the pinwheel. A program was developed for the Arduino microcontroller to record and process the data from the sensors in real-time to achieve automatic control of the bin filling. Laboratory tests with ‘Gala’ apples demonstrated that 97% of apples that had been handled by the new bin filler were rated Extra Fancy grade, and its performance exceeded the industry’s requirement for bruising damage to apples. Keywords: Apples, Automatic control, Bin filling, Bruising, Harvest, Sensors, Sorting and grading.

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Analysis of a Reciprocating Panel Fruit Lowering Device

Cited by 2 publications

References 0 publications

A Review of Bin Filling Technologies for Apple Harvest and Postharvest Handling

A Review of Bin Filling Technologies for Apple Harvest and Postharvest Handling

Development and Preliminary Evaluation of a New Bin Filler for Apple Harvesting and In-Field Sorting Machine

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