Price and Reliability.
Accuracy required varies but a minimum standard that I have seen validated in published scientific information is less than 7mm for adult food products. Sounds like a detector more suited to the pharmaceutical industry.
This forum is for free falling product and detecting 0.2mm in free fall would be incredible - well done if you can do that!
Regards,
Tony
Hi Tony,
For us high sample velocities and throughput variations, and therefore free-fall applications, are not expected to be a problem even at 0.2mm accuracy, but we have not yet finished even designing the first prototype. So we can only make predictions based on a prototype of a related technology that we built for the med-tech industry (detecting a bend in medical needles down to a fraction of an angular degree), and some initial calculations.
But if the accuracy of current detectors is already fully sufficient, then we can concentrate our efforts first on building a detector that is more reliable.
Cost: We think there is a good chance that if we get it to work, we can initially price it between $50k and $100k. Do you know what price ranges are currently? (I know a company that buys them for roughly CHF150k, so ca. $166k)
Concerning the pharma-industry: Do you happen to know some of the accuracy requirements there?
Reliability (For those that are also in the "what is the acceptable Metal size in finished products"-thread, this is a repetition): I did some research and found many factors that cause metal detectors to pass larger fragments than it should, or for instance wires (If oriented a certain way, sensitivity is low). Also, vibrations are generally a large issue, false calibration, change in temperature, too low or high operating temperature, changes in food throughput, metals in the surrounding. Today I spoke with a company in Switzerland that had a detector waste lots of food because it reacted to a metal plate that someone put nearby. Although the largest issue is probably that the inductive coil technology that they operate difficulties not reacting to food. Also, the usual sensors are less sensitive at the center, and towards steel. Yet another problem is that the electronics generally establish a baseline, and in part calibrate themselves, in order to not constantly go off. Unless I understand this wrong, it means that if the line is moving slower than 0.5 m/s, a metal particle may move slow enough to re-set the baseline, meaning this state of contamination becomes "acceptable".
Our sensor would operate on a fully different principle. We could tune out even the most conductive food, so we do not have to employ sophisticated electronics which would be easily thrown off by variations in temperature, speed etc, wich are employed in many current systems to get the most out of the signal. Also, we may shield the sensor from electromagnetic noise of both internal and external origin in the frequency range of interest. The detection would be equally sensitive towards all types of metals, and with a higher precision, even the diameter of a thin wire is sufficient to sort it out. Also, vibrations and objects around the detector should not upset the detection, and the operating temperature range will probably be far larger than current systems, and presumably able to handle unforeseen changes in sample temperature, throughput density, and velocity.
Cheers,
Alex
