Giant tweezers - photo

**Jon** · Dec 3, 2020, 01:42 PM

Not as giant as the tweezers in the first post, but the largest I could find. Sorting recycling?

**Elizabeth Greene** · Dec 3, 2020, 08:10 PM

They are picking out the non-clear glass.

I could build them a machine to do this automatically with air jets and machine vision. It probably wouldn't be as cheap as people though.

**nova_robotics** · Dec 3, 2020, 10:50 PM

Originally Posted by Elizabeth Greene

They are picking out the non-clear glass.

I could build them a machine to do this automatically with air jets and machine vision. It probably wouldn't be as cheap as people though.

Depends where the workers are employed. I'm up here in Canuckistan and that machine would pay for itself pretty quick. I saw a lightning fast air jet system for sorting salt crystals about 10 years ago that realistically probably only cost 2x the annual wage of a person (in Canada). Ancient vision system of some sort, probably just discrete optical sensors, and a whole bunch of air solenoids to eject the pieces of salt that didn't have the appearance they wanted. So if these guys are sorting glass somewhere in North America it might be economical.

These days you probably wouldn't want to use something like that dirty old salt sorter than I saw. Tensorflow is a wonderful thing.