Читать книгу The Manufacture of Tomato Products - W. G. Hier - Страница 23

The number of sorters which should be employed on each belt depends upon whether they are going to do both the inspecting and trimming, or the inspecting alone, and also upon the rate at which the tomatoes are fed to the belt, the length of the belt, and the quality of the fruit. Some pulp makers prefer to feed the belt at a uniform rate regardless of the quality of the fruit and to vary the number of sorters, employing about 14 or 16 to a belt when the quality is poor, and about half that number when the tomatoes are almost entirely sound and need very little trimming done to them. Others prefer to use the same number of sorters and trimmers on the belt all the time and to vary the speed of the belt according to the quality of the fruit, using a variable speed transmission for this purpose. When running on solid fruit, with very little decay, the maximum speed can be employed, say 40 feet per minute, and when running on stock that is not so good the speed can be decreased to about 10 feet per minute.

The Bureau of Chemistry advises very strongly against the practice of having the women who do the inspecting do the trimming also. They contend that inspecting and trimming should be two distinct and separate operations and each should be done by a different set of women. By this method the women on the sorting belt merely pick out all the tomatoes which are imperfect and throw them into receiving boxes which are attached to the framework of the sorting belt by a bracket, there being about four of these boxes to a table—two on each side. One or two women stand at each receiving box, pick out the defective tomatoes from this box, and trim out the bad part, which is dropped into a chute, which directs the material down to a drain underneath the table through which is flowing the waste water from the rotary washer. This stream, properly placed, has sufficient current to carry away the waste matter. The trimmer throws the good part of the tomato back on to the sorting belt. By using this system there is no lugging of boxes or buckets back and forth from the sorting table.

This method, which is the one approved by the Bureau of Chemistry, accomplishes the work more thoroughly than can be done if the inspecting and trimming are all done on the sorting belt by the same set of women. The minimum cost of sorting and trimming in this manner is from 2 to 3 cents per bushel, according to the government figures.

If the women on the sorting belt are to be used for both inspecting and trimming, a longer belt should be used than if inspecting alone is to be done. About 2 feet of belt should be allowed to each sorter.