HJV’s Split Grader with an integrated Tomra 3A series optical sorter was a popular attraction during the Aug. 21 Potato Field Day.
The Alliston, Ont. equipment company unveiled a prototype as part of its range of Grimme and Spudnik potato and cash cropping machinery solutions at the event organized by the Ontario Potato Board.
Why it matters: The grader uses optical sensing to sort potatoes and remove foreign debris, increasing storage capacity.
The HJV Split Grader has a Grimme receiving hopper to assist with soil extraction and feeds into the foldable lead-in elevator, ensuring a smooth flow of potatoes from the field to storage.
“The lead-in elevator folds up for road transport so that we can easily access the hitch, and for storage at the end of the season,” explained Dan Mann, vice president of HJV Engineering.
The potatoes are lifted via the elevator onto the coil table, where they are separated. One-third of the larger potatoes may be separated into storage, or after the remaining roughly two-thirds of the crop undergo optical sorting, the entire crop can be combined.
The integrated Tomra 3A series optical sorter can process 100 tonness per hour using a combination of air, LED illumination, camera-based imaging, and Artificial Intelligence to detect green potatoes and foreign materials such as clods, debris, golf balls, and walnuts.
“Once it detects a piece of foreign debris, these (plastic) fingers come out with air, and it kicks the debris onto this belt (to be disposed of),” said Mann. “And the potatoes land on this pintle belt, which is a nice soft landing, and are transported across and up an elevator to storage.”
At this point, if the larger potatoes haven’t been packed separately, they are recombined with the crop and placed into storage.
Significantly reducing potential foreign debris and green potatoes allows for increased storage capacity, speeds up the field-to-storage transfer process, and helps address labour shortages.
“This (Tomra) is on rails, so we can pull it out the side for maintenance or put it onto a secondary chassis for (potatoes) coming out of storage, where the machine optically looks at 100 per cent (of the crop) again to make sure there’s no foreign debris when it goes through to the factory,” said Mann.
He said the prototype will undergo rigorous field trials over the next two and a half months, with projected commercial availability in 2026.
The post HJV unveils split grader with Tomra Optical Sorter at Potato Field Day appeared first on Farmtario.
