WECO (Woodside Electronics Corporation), based in California, has been designing, manufacturing, and servicing electronic sorters for over thirty years and has thousands of units deployed worldwide. WECO serves several industries: tomato sorting on the harvester; the walnut industry; and several small fruits including, blueberries, cranberries and wine grapes.

WECO’s optical sorter for grapes uses the latest ChromaxHD optical sorting technology and advanced algorithms to efficiently remove under- and over-ripe fruit and foreign material (MOG). These features ensure vastly improved quality with increased throughput at a fraction of the price of alternative methods. Our system is also designed to be easy to understand and operate, employing intuitive controls and a touch-screen interface refined over the last 30 years.

Our wine grape sorter’s automation offers tremendous gains in productivity and labor efficiency.

Available in 32″ (81.3 cm) and 64″ (162.6 cm) width models.

Multi-Camera System Advantages

WECO designs and manufactures our camera/illuminator systems in-house specifically for high-speed sorting, which keeps costs low.

To maximize viewing of product flow, we divide the product flow into sections, which allows us to scale machines to nearly any width while maintaining a near flat-field, low-distortion image. For example, we use four cameras for a 32”-wide (81 cm) sorter.

Our resolution is superior. Using four cameras to view 32” (81 cm) of product flow offers four times the lateral pixels as a single camera viewing the same product flow.

The lower the light level, the less accurate the sort. Splitting the product flow for viewing by multiple cameras provides a flatter image and higher signal levels.

Each ChromaxHD camera module utilizes two high-speed DSP processors running in parallel, which enables real-time complex sort algorithms.  This reduces system cost and increases reliability.

If a camera fails, the remaining cameras continue to sort. Since the cameras are modular, replacement is accomplished easily in the field without requiring recalibration.