4 replies to this topic

[tufty1909]

We are using a colour sorter to take out colour defects in wheat, due to the fact that this machine will remove ergot,(a fungal desease of wheat that is toxic in high enough concentrations) and our other equipment will not it has to be a CCP.

The machine has self calibrations and failsafe systems incorporated, our present monitoring system is to take samples from the good product (post colour sorter) and inspect for discoloured product with trained staff.

This appears to be industry norm for these machines, but is questioned by auditors all the time.

Our wheat plant manager who has never been happy with the above system has made a test piece, which is a small peice of metal coated in black plastic, we have tested this peice (under test conditions), the colour sorter removes it, and if it did miss it and it ended up in product flow our metal detector will also remove it.

My Question is do you think that we should have a test peice manufactured properly, i.e. a plastic piece of the correct colour and size with a 2mm ball inside (we metal detect down to 1.6mm) and does this test peice need to marked in any way, it is quite small which makes it difficult.

[Jon5]

Do you have any sort of magnet in the system that could be used to remove the item? If you used a ferric metal this would work.

Jon

[Charles.C]

Dear Tufty,

I regret not being familiar with the technique / geometry of the system being used (ergot is reliably removed by colour?).

Nonetheless, it does not seem a good idea to deliberately generate a route for potentially introducing foreign material (plastic / metal) into one’s finished product. Cannot momentarily stop the infeed into the sorter / simulate the typical working matrix for the test ?

Rgds / Charles.C

BTW – Welcome to the forum !

[Tony-C]

My Question is do you think that we should have a test peice manufactured properly, i.e. a plastic piece of the correct colour and size with a 2mm ball inside (we metal detect down to 1.6mm) and does this test peice need to marked in any way, it is quite small which makes it difficult.

If you already have test pieces for your metal detector and this is only used to check the colour sorter why would you want to waste money getting another test piece?

Regards,

Tony

[tufty1909]

Dear Tufty,

I regret not being familiar with the technique / geometry of the system being used (ergot is reliably removed by colour?).

Nonetheless, it does not seem a good idea to deliberately generate a route for potentially introducing foreign material (plastic / metal) into one’s finished product. Cannot momentarily stop the infeed into the sorter / simulate the typical working matrix for the test ?

Rgds / Charles.C

yes ergot is reliably removed by colour. which is the worst of the two evils, do we continue with a weak monitoring system for our CCP, or put a test peice through which may cause us to have to rework product, if the colour sorter and metal detector fail?
we cannot replocate the working of the machine without it running.