Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/491368
50 STiR tea & coffee industry international Stuart Eunson, center, managing director of Arabic Roasters with team in Beijing. Typical switchboard gallery with multi-screen solution. Roast profile screen in BRIGUS, the new control system for Joper roasters and dropped to manually make profile changes. On the website for Stone Street Cof- fee Company in Brooklyn, a business that uses Joper's equipment to semi-automate its roasts, the company explained their reasoning for moving to such a system: "Our one bag roasters are the perfect size. Small enough not to have to water quench (the unacceptable practice of us- ing water to quicken the cooling process after roasting) and large enough to crank out some serious volume." Another major change is that the sen- sors used to collect those measurements have become more affordable. Opera- tors no longer need to be as involved in collecting that information. A factory technician may once have needed to take temperature readings and record them manually for later input into a database after walking from the factory floor with clipboard in hand back to his desk. Those readings can be automatically registered by controllers and sent back to the MES to be saved for further analysis. Perhaps even more impressive are system designs in which ambient humid- ity and temperature readings are taken throughout the plant. When such data are available, the MES and PLCs can be pro- grammed to make automatic adjustments to roast time and temperature taking into account that on a given roast day the en- vironment is slightly different than it was when the roast profile was recorded. The degree to which the human ma- chine interface of roasting controls can be customized varies from one equip- ment supplier to another. Probat and Joper both supply turn-key solutions for smaller plants meant to be used with min- imal modification. Like Neuhaus Neotec, both will customize automation and the computer interfaces an operator uses per a customers' requirements. All three take