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A DIY M&Ms and Skittles sorting machine

willemm.nl

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Re: A DIY M&Ms and Skittles sorting machine

#81

Post by mulmen »

rmason wrote: post #72
jacobolus wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the 1970s, the USA sold a large amount of wheat to the USSR in a famous deal. The contract stipulated that the wheat would contain something like (I heard this from a friend whose friend knew something about it; in searching I can’t find a source online, so the story might be apocryphal. I also might be off on the precise percentage.)

Grain elevator contracts contain an allowed foreign material allowance. Farmer's bringing in their grain get docked for any foreign material. Then the elevators add foreign material to the grain as train cars are loaded. It's crazy but that's just how the industry has always worked.

Do you have a source for this? What kind of material do they add?

Re: A DIY M&Ms and Skittles sorting machine

#82

Post by rmetzler »

aaron695 wrote: post #77
jacobolus wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the 1970s, the USA sold a large amount of wheat to the USSR in a famous deal. The contract stipulated that the wheat would contain something like (I heard this from a friend whose friend knew something about it; in searching I can’t find a source online, so the story might be apocryphal. I also might be off on the precise percentage.)

There's also the 'story' of the Japanese firm who included 10 broken 'X's' with the delivery of X, since the contract stated 10 broken X's per 10000. I think you'll find neither story is true. Like most Urban Legends it's a bit silly, people are people whatever the culture. They have common sense.

Usually they include 10 Xs more for the broken ones.

Re: A DIY M&Ms and Skittles sorting machine

#83

Post by BillyParadise »

sahinabi wrote: post #69
BillyParadise wrote: post #68

You could probably sell one of these into every concert theatre in the world. I'm wracking my brain and exercising my google-fu, but I can't seem to find/remember which famous musician wanted only one color of candy on their rider. Or was it everything except the green ones. Or something like that.

van halen - apparently they don't want the green ones : http://www.snopes.com/music/artists/vanhalen.asp

silly me, forgot to check snopes. Thanks for the link!

Re: A DIY M&Ms and Skittles sorting machine

#84

Post by [deleted] »

sahinabi wrote: post #69
BillyParadise wrote: post #68

You could probably sell one of these into every concert theatre in the world. I'm wracking my brain and exercising my google-fu, but I can't seem to find/remember which famous musician wanted only one color of candy on their rider. Or was it everything except the green ones. Or something like that.

van halen - apparently they don't want the green ones : http://www.snopes.com/music/artists/vanhalen.asp

[deleted]

Re: A DIY M&Ms and Skittles sorting machine

#85

Post by aaron695 »

mulmen wrote: post #81
rmason wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grain elevator contracts contain an allowed foreign material allowance. Farmer's bringing in their grain get docked for any foreign material. Then the elevators add foreign material to the grain as train cars are loaded. It's crazy but that's just how the industry has always worked.

Do you have a source for this? What kind of material do they add?

Sounds illegal - https://www.gipsa.usda.gov/fgis/grainhandling.aspx

Except -

"Recombine or add broken corn and broken kernels to whole grain of the same kind, provided, that no dockage or foreign material, including dust, has been added to the broken corn or broken kernels;"

Re: A DIY M&Ms and Skittles sorting machine

#86

Post by jvanloov »

jacquesm wrote: post #54

What a nice job this person did. Coincidentially I'm working on something similar at the moment only with an order of complexity that is several magnitudes larger than the one on display here (39000 different shapes, several 10's of possible colors). But my contraption doesn't nearly look as nice as this one and definitely is not ready for any kind of production. I've been working on this for the last two years or so…

> [...] and every time there is a minor breakthrough I feel like throwing a party

Yes!

It's become a deliberate strategy of mine to set the subgoal complexity in my personal projects such that I get a small "yes! it works!"-rush about once per week or so. It's what keeps me going on larger projects, even if occasionally some part takes longer to do.

Re: A DIY M&Ms and Skittles sorting machine

#88

Post by LukeShu »

mmirate wrote: post #21
Drdrdrq wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But it doesn't just reject every bad seed, instead it will optimize to keep within legally accepted limits. This is just... I guess the emotion you feel when reading the last paragraph defines you as either technical guy (outrage / resignation, depending on your age and experience) or managerial guy (pure delight). I am guessing there is a switch that makes it sort properly, you know, for VIP?

So if someone reacts with delight to that last paragraph, then they must lack technical knowledge? This seems inaccurate.

You seem to have missed the point of the remark. It isn't about technical knowledge, it is about differing priorities.

Re: A DIY M&Ms and Skittles sorting machine

#89

Post by ot »

aaron695 wrote: post #77
jacobolus wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the 1970s, the USA sold a large amount of wheat to the USSR in a famous deal. The contract stipulated that the wheat would contain something like (I heard this from a friend whose friend knew something about it; in searching I can’t find a source online, so the story might be apocryphal. I also might be off on the precise percentage.)

There's also the 'story' of the Japanese firm who included 10 broken 'X's' with the delivery of X, since the contract stated 10 broken X's per 10000. I think you'll find neither story is true. Like most Urban Legends it's a bit silly, people are people whatever the culture. They have common sense.

In the Google SRE book they say that if a service has reliability much better than the stated SLO they artificially introduce errors to get closer to the error budget.

This is to prevent over-reliance on the measured SLO rather than the stated SLO in upstream services.

Re: A DIY M&Ms and Skittles sorting machine

#90

Post by dejv »

Animats wrote: post #11

Here's the commercial version.[1] This machine is sorting peas by color. Peas. Individual peas. Each individual pea is examined by cameras for size, color, and looking like a pea. Rejects are kicked into the reject hopper by an air jet. There are machines like this for most fruit. Typical throughput is a ton per hour. Most fruit and berries go through such machines today. That's why the fruit at the supermarket is so…

Another one for grape sorting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AamACDnwRts

You feed the whole grape clusters, machine remove each individual berry from stem and then rejects all the unripe/damaged berries and little debris. All in speed of many tons per hour.

All of those are incredible machines, I wish I can buy it for my winery, but even small machines costs something like mid sized house.

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