International Specialty Supply
Supplying Sprout Companies Throughout the World
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International Specialty Supply Supplying Sprout Companies Throughout the World
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820 East 20th Street Cookeville, TN 38501 USA 931 526 1106
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Automated Weighing and Filling Unless a sprout producer is automated, the most expensive step in producing bean sprouts is the weighing and packaging. This step is also a critical control point where a sick or infected employee, breathing and handling the sprouts, can contaminate your product. Our own sprout company, Sungarden Sprouts, controls labor and the spread of communicable diseases by never touching the sprouts from start to finish. Each bin of sprouts that is ready for harvest is removed from the growing room and automatically lifted and tilted so the sprouts gradually fall into the wash tank. The wash tank removes the hulls and the sprouts are lifted out of the tank by a conveyor and onto an air-knife table for dewatering. The dewatered sprouts move to an incline conveyor and into a scale system where they are automatically weighed into either 12 oz (340g) or 5 lb (2.25 kg) portions and dropped into a bag. The package (bag, box, pint container, etc.) can either be placed by hand under the scales or an automatic packaging machine can be placed below the scales. Bean sprouts are not an easy product to weigh correctly because they attach themselves to each other as they come up the incline conveyor and move through the scales. ISS has perfected a method to make bean sprouts easily flow through the system and weigh accurately. ISS offers several sizes of scales to match grower’s needs. The scales portion the sprouts from 3 oz to 10 pounds (100g – 4.5 kg) and drop them into your bag or container. More than one drop can be made to fill larger bags. Cycle times range from 5 to 24 bags per minute.
That’s a range of 900 – 7,000 lb (400 – 3,265 kg) per hour; depending on
the size container you are filling and the number of heads on the weighing
machine. As the sprouts come off the incline conveyor and into the scale system, they fall into the first of a series of vibrating pans. The sprouts travel from one pan to the next and into a weighing hopper. When the weighing hopper reaches the desired weight, the pans above stop vibrating until the weighing hopper opens to drops the sprouts. When the weighing hopper closes, the process begins again. Either an electric eye or foot/hand switch control opens and closes the weighing hopper; or, you can set the scales to drop as soon as the weighing hopper is ready to drop the sprouts. A person holding each bag under the scale can do roughly 15 five-pound bags per minute. If the same person seals the bag it is roughly 10 per minute. If the scales drop the bean sprouts into an automatic packaging machine, the scales can run to capacity without interruption. Menu driven controls give you job memory storage, easy-to-read graphics and help menus on each screen. The scales can be designed to interface with the conveyor and bagger of your choice, or this equipment can be purchased from ISS. Our scales reduce labor, reduce the risk of contamination from handling, and reduce the waste and inaccuracies that come with over and under weighing. They are a great investment for medium and large growers. |
