Vacuum system mounted on a platform may look strange, but orchard managers seem pleased with performance. With four vacuum arms, a spinning bin filler and a noisy gasoline engine perched atop a self-steering platform, the Seussian machine earned itself a few nicknames as it motored through Central Washington orchards during trials this fall.
Read MoreAutomated Ag’s new machine The Cyclone, was selected as a winner for the 2019 World Ag Expo® Top-10 New Products Competition. You can visit Automated Ag at the 2019 World Ag Expo® at booth numbers Q36 and Q38 in Tulare, California on February 12-14, 2019.
Read MoreMOSES LAKE, Wash. — Automated Ag Systems, of Moses Lake, and DBR Conveyor Concepts, of Conklin, Mich., are field testing a hybrid system they say will be the best harvest assist for apples short of robotic pickers.The system features DBR vacuum tubes replacing picker bags and mounted on Automated Ag’s self-propelled Bandit Express picking platform. It will be an affordable tool significantly improving efficiency until and perhaps beyond the advent of commercial robotic pickers in five to eight years….
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Read MoreAutomated Ag Systems Machine, was on the Cover of Good Fruit Grower and included an article by Shannon Dininny.
In today’s modern, high-density orchards, growers are constantly seeking new ways to match the biology of their trees with emerging technologies in mechanization. The goal: improve both yields and efficiency. Good Fruit Link: Read More -->
Read MoreMOSES LAKE, Wash. — J.J. Dagorret doesn’t make detailed drawings. When he gets an idea he mulls it over in his mind.
“I get irritable. I need my concentration. I can be like a mad scientist,” he says.
When he’s ready, he tells his workers what he needs. What to cut. What to weld. What goes here. What goes there. How long that needs to be. No, it needs to go like that.
“It’s all wrapped up in my head and I can see it. It takes me eight weeks to build a prototype. I like the nuts and bolts side of things,” he says.
Read MoreBy Ryan Bell
PUBLISHED October 26, 2016
Last fall, I picked a wild apple from a tree growing in the Ile-Alatau Mountains of southern Kazakhstan. It was a Malus sieversii, wild ancestor of the cultivated apple. Biting into it, the flavor was bitter—a “spitter,” as apple aficionados call them—nothing like the sweet Fuji apples I eat from the tree on my family’s farm in Washington State.
Read MoreMaking apple trees grow shorter over the years has made them easier to pick and ship, but it has also left them more vulnerable to disease.
By Ryan Bell
PUBLISHED October 26, 2016
Last fall, I picked a wild apple from a tree growing in the Ile-Alatau Mountains of southern Kazakhstan. It was a Malus sieversii, wild ancestor of the cultivated apple. Biting into it, the flavor was bitter—a “spitter,” as apple aficionados call them—nothing like the sweet Fuji apples I eat from the tree on my family’s farm in Washington State.
Read MoreBy: Christina Herrick May 27, 2016
Karen Lewis, tree fruit regional specialist with Washington State University Extension, often prefaces her talks on mechanization with a tale of two orchards. She drops off two platforms at Orchard A and Orchard B. She goes through how to work the equipment, all the needed how-to information, gets crews started on them, and then lets the crews on each orchard go.
Two weeks later, she returns to both orchards and discovers markedly different attitudes.
Read MoreSometimes less is more. That may be true in the development of automated harvesters as the U.S. apple industry continues its quest for mechanization to save money and alleviate labor shortages.
For years, developers have focused on prototype harvesters that replace picking bags and ladders with conveyor belts or vacuum tubes and adjustable platforms that allow pickers to more easily reach the fruit. The belts or tubes carry the fruit to a sorting area on the machine, where optical scanners or people separate the apples into bins.
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