Method and apparatus for sorting fruits and vegetables

An apparatus for sorting objects, such as fruits and vegetables of various shapes, such as spheroid shape, spherical massive shape, non-spherical massive shape and amorphous shape, which apparatus comprises:

• a conveyor chain means;
• a plurality of mounting members on said conveyor chain means spaced from each other at fixed intervals;
• a tray device loosely mounted on each of said mounting members for movement up and down, back and forth and right and left relative to said mounting devices, said tray devices each having at least one tray for supporting an object and having a shallow bottom, said tray being mounted on said mounting device for sideways tilting relative to the direction of conveyor chain means travel, and further having an engaging mechanism holding the tray in a horizontal position, said engaging mechanism having a releasing lever projecting from under the tray device;
• a plurality of measuring units along said conveyor chain means and being an electronic weighing unit for weighing the object supported on a tray, a planar shape measuring unit for measuring the shape and size of the object from above, and a side shape measuring unit for measuring the shape and size of the object from the side, said units producing output signals correspondingly to the measurements;
• a computing device connected to said measuring units for comparing the measurements from said measuring units with predetermined values for ranking the object into classes as to its weight, as to its planar shape and size, as to its side shape and size, and providing discharge signals for the objects corresponding to the respective classes of the objects and reject signals for objects which do not fall within the predetermined values;
• a plurality of object receiving bins positioned along the conveyor chain means for receiving objects discharged from the conveyor chain means, the bins for receiving objects in classes in which a large number of objects are expected to be classified being longer in the direction of the conveyor chain means than the other bins;
• and
• a plurality of discharge operation devices positioned along said conveyor chain means in positions corresponding to said bins and supplied with the discharge and reject signals from said computing device for being actuated for discharging objects into the respective bins according to classes and discharging the rejected objects separately from the other objects, there being a plurality of discharge operation devices opposite said longer bins.