Food Product Inspection

Virtually every food product we consume has been weighed and inspected or graded to some particular standard imposed either by consumer demand or government/industry legislation. Historically most inspection and grading has been carried out by human ‘observation’ which has naturally resulted in lapses of judgment. This in turn can lead to reduced consumer confidence in a particular product and even product recalls in the case of product contamination.

In the last decade more and more automated inspection systems have been deployed in the food processing industry. This has been driven by three main factors:

1) high power low cost processors and sensor technology,

2) high labor cost and lack of labor in some areas

3) increasing stringent standards for food products requiring tighter more reliable inspection offered by impartial ‘machines’.

The NMI Design Solutions team have a large amount of experience in the area of product inspection and handling. Specific areas of interest include color, defect, firmness, sweetness and weight measurement and also packing systems. We employ a combination of near infrared (NIR) spectroscopy, vision systems, colour sensor technology, shock sensors, standard load cells etc. to make measure the required physical characteristics.

Power Electronics

Improvements in the performance of power switching devices coupled with advanced low cost DSP controllers is resulting in increasingly efficient, compact and reliable inverter based switching power designs. Key applications of power switching circuits include switch mode power supplies, solar inverters, wind turbine inverters, motor control for hybrid/electric vehicles. NMI has an active on-going research program into inverter design and the development of inverter control solutions for both solar inverters and 3-phase motor control.

©2006 NMI Design Solutions