Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/45659
"It's a year-round machine. (Continued from page 10) for Michigan have a wider platform reach to accommodate the industry's wider row spacings of up to 18 feet. Control levers enable workers to widen or narrow their platform to best reach the fruit. Apples picked are placed in a hose lined with quarter-inch neoprene foam That makes it real versatile and gives it a quick payback." —Phil Brown and moved by vacuum to the dry-system decelerator. The patented decelerator is a large wheel with foam wedges that con- trols and extracts the apples out of the vacuum environment, Rasch said. The maximum apple diameter that can be accommodated by the machine is 4.5 inches. Apples are gently distributed in the bin by large neoprene foam flaps dubbed "elephant ears" by Penn State researchers, Rasch said. An electric eye moves the bin filler up and down. Four empty bins on a trailer follow the harvester. Filled bins are discharged onto the ground, with a fresh, empty bin put in its place. Though special skill isn't needed to pick and place the apples in the hose inlet, timing of apple placement in the tubes is important, Rasch said. "The singulation [time between each apple] must be coor- dinated between picks," he said, adding that three-fourths of a second is needed between each apple to keep them from bumping into each other as they move through the tube. "If you put sixty apples in the tube within ten seconds, you'd have bruising." Picker efficiency How does the machine compare to traditional ladder and bag picking? An average picker using a ladder can pick a bin of fruit per hour, which equates to about 40 bins for a crew of four in a ten- hour day. Rasch believes that to make the harvest machine cost effective, the four- person crew must pick a bin every ten minutes, a speed he considers doable because ladders, picking bags, and walk- ing to and from the bin are all eliminated. That would be six bins an hour or 60 bins in a ten-hour day. Only 1.3 seconds are needed to pick an apple and bring it to the tube inlet, so picking efficiency could be faster than six bins per hour, he said. "The speed of the machine will always be as fast as your slowest worker on the crew." Quality assurance The harvester machine will change how crew supervisors monitor the quality of the apples being picked by the workers. Supervisors will need to use their eyes and ears, watching for spurs on the ground and listening as pickers are in action, Rasch said. "But by watching the pickers and checking fruit in the bin, there are some checks and balances." Rasch added that they are in the process of adding sorting technology to the harvester, which would add field sort- ing of fruit. Versatility Once harvest is over, the picking appa- ratus can be replaced with a regular plat- form, and the machine used for pruning, limb tying, thinning, and other orchard chores, explains Brown, adding that four workers can be situated on each side. "Basically, it's a year-round machine," Brown said. "That makes it real versatile and gives it a quick payback." A price tag hasn't been put on the apple harvest machine yet, but Brown believes that units will retail for less than $100,000. • 12 NOVEMBER 2011 GOOD FRUIT GROWER www.goodfruit.com