摘要 |
A torque-type pitter for pitting drupes such as cling-stone peaches and the like, having coplanar, body-bisecting and pit-holding blades, and coaxial elements for gripping the peach body at opposite sides of the plane of said blades for twisting the peach halves from the blade-held pit. One of said blades has pitting knives or a pitting spoon in the plane of said blade that are normally inoperative where the pit in the peach between the blades is sound, or momentarily appears to be sound, but upon said blade passing between the halves of a split pit without hesitation, said knives or spoon will automatically be projected into the gripped halves to positions in which the rotation of said halves by said elements will spoon-pit the halves. Where a pit is momentarily engaged by the pair of pit-holding blades as though it were sound and then the blades travel past the edges of the defective (or "late" split) pit, the pitting knives will remain in inoperative in the plane of the blade, thereby precluding mutilation of the halves as would occur were the knives to engage the pit or to cut remote from the pit during rotation of the bisected halves. |