| 摘要 |
An apparatus for cutting optimally sized fruit and vegetable pieces, such as potatoes, that is made of a dump chute, a trough, a conveyor having paddles forming paddle pockets, a drive means, at least one sensor, a programmable logic controller (PLC), and a cutter assembly. The dump chute receives materials and loads them singly onto a conveyor within a paddle pocket disposed along the conveyor. The drive means moves the conveyor, which then advances the material from the dump chute toward the cutter. As the material moves along the trough, the sensor determines the first and second ends of the potato and inputs this information to the PLC. This PLC has a human interactive component for selecting the criteria to be used in selecting the dimensions of the desired potato pieces to be obtained. The PLC receives the information from the sensors and determines the number and sizes of the pieces that the potato should be cut into to achieve the optimal results based upon the pre-selected criteria. This information is then passed to the cutter and makes the directed number of cuts necessary to obtain the pre-desired number of optimally sized vegetable pieces.
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