Development, Test, and Improvement of an Infield Use Bin Filler

Abstract

AbstractFilling apples into a bin in the field is a bottleneck for apple production mechanization. Though a lot of bin fillers have been developed and commercially adopted, a majority are for indoor packinghouse use, which could not meet the infield requirement due to their large size, complexity, and high cost. An automatic bin filler was developed but did not result in satisfactory performance. This study focused on identifying the reasons for the poor performance of the bin filler and made improvements. The high apple bruising incidence was caused by the apple collision at the pair of foam rollers, high velocity when fruit exiting from the pinwheel, and insufficient compartments to hold one apple by one compartment. The uneven fruit distributions were mainly caused by the short pads. A second version bin filler was constructed by adding a pair of foam rollers at the top of the bin filler, adding the pinwheel compartments number from four to nine, attaching soft foams at the pads, and replacing the short pads with long ones. Experimental results showed that the second version bin filler would generate minimal apple bruising (<2%). An innovative method for quantitatively analyzing apple distributions in the bin was developed, validated, and future applied in this study. The second version bin filler distributed apples more evenly in the bin over the first version bin filler. The second version bin filler, due to its satisfactory performance, has a chance for commercial infield application.KeywordsAgricultural safetyFresh market applesHarvest-assistLow-costOccupational injuriesSeasonal workersErgonomic analysis