Dec 28, 2009

A Nifty Sucker: Vacuum Machine Harvests Fresh-Market Apples

A vacuum-cleaner-like machine that boosts apple picker productivity by 25 percent, cuts the level of bruising in half compared to hand picking and can use less experienced, less physically robust workers was demonstrated in a Michigan orchard Nov. 6, and it brought rave reviews from growers and industry experts who turned out to watch.

The machine was developed by Phil Brown, owner of Phil Brown Welding, located on Fruit Ridge in Conklin, working with neighboring apple grower and machine designer Mike Rasch and Mike’s cousin Chuck Dietrich, an oil industry engineering consultant. The demonstration, which drew about 50 people loaded with cameras and video recorders, took place in Rasch’s Rome apple orchard.

“I think we have an apple harvester,” said Phil Schwallier, the Michigan State University Extension horticulturist who worked with the developers to evaluate its performance. “I think this is a major breakthrough.”

Two novel pieces of the patent-pending picker are 1) the slippery, neoprene-lined vacuum tubes that carry apples from workers’ hands to the bin and 2) the apple decelerator and dry bin filler that transfers apples out of the tube onto a revolving fan-like device with paddles made of canvas, which gently places them into the bin. Rasch and Dietrich designed the tube and Brown designed the decelerator and bin filler.

The overall machine was put together in the Phil Brown Welding shop, where the company fabricates about 35 different orchard machines. The harvesting unit sits on a Brownie II, which is Brown’s four-man, dual-level mobile platform he introduced two years ago for pruning, thinning and installing trellis. The picker mounts or dismounts on the platform in a half hour, Brown said, so it adds one more use to an existing machine.

The machine pulls a five-bin shuttle, and the worker running the machine transfers the filler from bin to bin after each is full. Within the bin, the height of the apple drop is regulated by an electric eye that senses the distance and moves the filler up and down.

Four men on the machine pick from two rows of trees and should fill five bins in an hour, Brown said. Normally, he said, one man can pick one 20-bushel bin in an hour. The bins on the shuttles never touch the ground.

The 25 percent improvement Brown claims seems conservative. The system eliminates ladders and picking sacks, the climbing and walking and worker fatigue that comes from carrying 50 pounds of apples.

“Moving ladders really slows workers down,” Brown said.

The hydrostatically powered, three-wheeled platform moves at variable speeds, and can be run either start and stop or creep; and the 5-foot-long platforms let workers move back and forth. The platforms themselves can move into and out of the trees, about 3 feet of movement sideways.

The flow goes like this: Pickers on the platforms pick apples, but instead of putting them into a picking sack they place the apples into a foam-lined funnel that is the entry to the 4-inch vacuum tube. Apples move through the tube to a vacuum chamber decelerator (which will be described more fully when the patent process is further along). It transfers the apple without losing the vacuum. That decelerator chamber is a key element, Brown said.

Apples move through as fast as a person can pick, but they must enter the tube one by one. That takes a deliberate motion to place the apple into the vacuum.

“It takes them as fast as you can put them in,” Brown said.

From the decelerator, individual apples fall onto a canvas “fan,” where they roll off the blades onto the apples in the bin. The electric eye keeps the distributing fan very close to the top of the apples, so there is virtually no drop.

When the bin is full, the operator (who steers using hand or foot controls and also picks) moves the filler to the next bin. The vacuum tube is long enough to reach each of the five bins. A shuttle with full bins is unhooked and a new shuttle is attached, an operation that takes place at row ends.

While the machine will help experienced pickers harvest more apples, it opens picking to less talented people and people who aren’t physically as strong, Brown said.

“Anybody can pick apples now.”

Conceivably, it would open the field to older people and to women who may not be adept at moving ladders or lugging full picking sacks of apples.

Platforms that move in and out are important to pickers, Brown said.

“Until we can grow apples on fruiting walls, we need to accommodate the trees we have today,” he said. “Pickers need to be able to reach into the trees to get the apples.”

The machine needs about 5 feet of open alley, and the combined 6 feet of platform movement (3 feet on each side) moves workers far enough to cover trees on 14-foot row spacings.

The platform and the blowers that create the vacuum are powered by a 36-horsepower diesel engine. There is power to all three wheels, but only one wheel steers. There is a muffler on the machine to suppress the blower noise.

Brown and Rasch believe the harvester can be used on “any firm, round fruit.” That could include citrus, tomatoes and stone fruits, but probably not pears.

The vacuum tube might need to be sized to the fruit. They noted this year that round fruit, like Rome apples, handled better than “typey” fruit like Delicious. On Golden Delicious this year, which were large and elongated with pronounced lobes, some bruising occurred on some of the tips. They also noted that some Honeycrisp and SweeTango apples this year were so large they would not have fit through the tube.

The machine is a prototype now and some design aspects are still being worked on, including deciding the exact diameter of the tube and whether different tubes may be needed to cover the full range of apple diameters. Brown also intends to adapt the unit to mount on the Brownie, the one-man platform now in use in some 800 orchards in North America.

Brown Welding is still working on the economics. The company has not developed a price.

Brown said development costs have not been inconsequential and, except for one small grant, the costs have been borne by the company.

Both proudly and modestly, Mike Rasch summed it up: “We’re just farmers from Conklin, Michigan. But we think this is a better mouse trap.”

See it in action: Click here.