Stellenbosh University: Left to Right: Prof Anton Basson; Nporval Geldenhuys; Hardu Scheepers; Cornel Liebenberg; Daniel Malan
After two intensive days of judging the panel of judges concluded and agreed that Stellenbosch University’s Sunnyside Packer was the winning entry. The Air Bot design from the Tshwane University of Tech-nology was a very close second and the Automated Restaurant from WITS placed third.
The Blitz Burger from the University of Johannesburg was commended for their innovative ideas.
The Judging Team
This year’s judging panel were made up of Tobias Nittel (Technology Field Manager Food and Beverage for SEW Eurodrive), Stefan Mole-naar (Managing Director of HG Molenaar), Chris Oliver (Sales and De-velopment Engineer at FESTO Didactic), Jacques Du Sautoy (Automa-tion Specialist at Nestle) and Andreas Keller (Sales Manager at FESTO Europe West - North).
The winners receive a ten day all expenses paid trip to Germany for their group and the runners up receive a Canon digital camera each. Furthermore the winning university receives R 100 000 worth of prod-ucts from Festo and SEW Eurodrive while each participant is entitled to R 40 000 worth of products for completing the competition.
Stellenbosch University – SunnySide Apple Packer
Students Norval Geldenhuys, Cornel Liebenberg, Daniel Malan and Hardus Scheepers delivered a design report that is essentially a "high-speed, accurate and selective apple packer".
They noted that because apple packing is currently done by hand, many potential problems with labour – including inconsistent quality – are experienced by farms and distributors.
Their proposed packing machine is designed to improve the market-ability of first-grade boxed apples. This is accomplished by boxing “red” apples (any apples with some red colouring) with their best-looking and best-coloured side facing upwards.
Packing apples in this manner produces a much more desirable box than a randomly packed box, an obvious benefit to retailers.