Automatic ejector rate normalizer

Claim 1

In a sorter of fungible products for removing non-standard products from standard ones having a plurality of channels from a pre-sorted mass of products to the sorted output through which move separate, substantially equal streams of products while being sorted, each channel including detection means for identifying non-standard products to be ejected and intermittently operated ejector means operated by said detection means in response to the detecting of a non-standard product, said detector means including sensitivity control means for determining the amount of deviation from standard that determines non-standard product detection, said sensitivity control means including a comparator having a first input indicative of a detected vaue of the products in the moving stream and a second input indicative of a trip level value of a non-standard product to be ejected, the improvement of an automatic ejector gate normalizer in which one of said channels is designated as the master channel and the other of said channels are designated as slave channels, comprising said master channel including a master channel comparator producing an output each time a distributed trip level value is exceeded in the process of detecting a non-standard product in said master channel, master channel output pulse means for producing a pulse each time there is a non-standard product output from said master channel comparator, a master channel counter for producing an output after a predetermined number of counts from said master channel output pulse means, each of said respective slave channels including a slave channel comparator producing an output each time an adjusted trip level value is exceeded in the process of detecting a non-standard product in said respective slave channel, a slave channel output pulse means for producing a pulse each time there is a non-standard product output from said respective slave channel comparator, a slave channel counter for producing an output after said predetermined number of counts from said respective slave channel output pulse means, an up/down counter connected to the output of said master channel counter and said respective slave channel counter for producing a down output when the output from said master channel counter arrives before the output from said slave channel counter and for producing an up output when the output from said slave channel counter arrives before the output from said master channel counter, and multiplying means for receiving the distributed trip level value and producing the adjusted trip level value to said slave channel comparator, said multiplying means multiplying the distributed trip level value by a factor determined by said up/down counter to produce said slave channel adjusted trip level value for adjusting said slave channel output pulse means so that said slave channel counter produces its next subsequent output in time closer to the time of the next expected output from said master channel counter.