Indent Separators - Every Tool Has a Job

This article is the second in a series I will be doing called Every Tool Has A Job. This idea came about because of the amount of customers I find myself going through the basics on why each machine is in a plant and what its specific purpose is. These articles will be short and to the point aiming to get you the basic level of knowledge on each piece of equipment in a cleaning facility.

Every tool has a job to do in a cleaning facility: Air Screen: width separation; Indent: length separation; Gravity Table: density separation; Optical Sorter: visual separation. In this article we will be discussing the Indent Separator.

What does the Cimbria Indent Separator Do?

The Indent Separators main job is a Length Separation. The Cimbria Heid Indented Separator is most commonly set up with two large cylinders set up so that we do the shorter separation on the top and the longer separation on the bottom. Each cylinder will have pockets or “indentations” on the inside of them. These cylinders will spin and as they do the seed will flow from one end to the other. On the top cylinder anything that is smaller than the good product will fall into an indent and be picked up and rotated to the top, once it gets to the top it will fall out and into a trough that is inside the cylinder and runs the length of it, this is then discarded and the remaining see in the top cylinder falls to the bottom cylinder. On the bottom cylinder we do a similar but opposite separation. As the seed flows through we are picking all of the good seed we want to keep and lifting it to the trough, we then keep this seed and anything that is left in the cylinder is discarded.

As we move seed through the two Indent Cylinders we remove the smaller product on the top and then pick out the good product on the bottom, by doing this anything that is shorter or longer has been removed and we now have a sample that is sized according to its length.