27 www.drivesncontrols.com March 2025 FOOD AND BEVERAGE n Grape-harvesting machine handles 75% slopes White wine is the most popular alcoholic beverage in the UK – we consume about £12bn worth of alcohol in the four weeks leading up to Christmas. To keep supplying wine, especially with labour shortages in farming, winegrowers must increasingly rely on automation during the grape harvest. But vineyards on slopes with a 75% gradient and narrow rows of vines were previously considered di cult to automate. The German vineyard technology specialist CH Engineering has developed a compact harvesting vehicle precisely for this tricky application. The harvester is based on a 1.32m-wide and 3.2m-long tracked vehicle. Weighing 2.7 tonnes, it is light and small enough to be transported on a tractor trailer, allowing it to be used on vineyards with narrow access roads. When it arrives on site, a side ramp on the trailer folds out, the vehicle drives down and into the vineyard row. A harvesting attachment is connected to the front-loading area of the tracked vehicle in 30 minutes. Shaped like a giant nutcracker, it has two movable arms, connected to the upper part of the machine that enclose the vine. On the insides of these arms is a mechanism that vibrates the vine up to 620 times per minute to shake o the grapes. The harvester moves down the vineyard at a speed of 3-5km/h – faster than any human harvester. A collection system under the machine gathers the grapes and transports them to a container. A belt guide avoids squeezing of the grapes, while a leaf separator avoids unwanted residues. When the machine reaches the bottom of the row, the driver opens the harvesting head, and the machine it is pulled back up the slope by a winch that connects the vehicle to the trailer. It provides an electronically-controlled pulling force of 1.5 tonnes, allowing it to haul the machine up gradients of up to 75%. On its return journey, the vehicle can reach speeds of up to 9km/h. When it reaches the trailer, the operators empty the container and move the vehicle into position for the next row of vines until the entire vineyard has been harvested. The machine is equipped with a modern digital controls which ensures consistent harvesting quality. There are programs for dierent varieties of grape, as well as a washing system. A major achievement in the machine’s design is its ability to cope with harsh vineyard conditions, while simultaneously reducing the need for maintenance. For example, the designers chose polymer bearings instead of metal bearings. In the past, ball bearings used in vineyard applications had become so badly corroded that they only lasted one season before they needed to be replaced, despite daily lubrication. The plastic plain bearings, supplied by igus, are corrosion-free, robust and need no extra lubrication, because solid lubricants are already integrated in the material, enabling low-friction dry running. The designers also opted for energy chains made of highperformance plastic to guide the hydraulic and electrical cables from the vehicle to the harvesting head. These e-chains, also supplied by igus, not only prevent the cables from kinking and jamming, but also eliminate the risk of them getting caught in the vines. The e-chains help increase the longevity of the machine, says Justin Leonard, director of e-chains and cables at igus UK. They are made of durable, corrosion-free, UV-resistant high-performance plastic, meaning and retain their mechanical properties for many years, without needing maintenance. n German engineers have come up with a machine that can harvest grapes from the steepest vineyard slopes. The machine uses an electronically-controlled winch to haul it up the slopes, and incorporates polymer bearings and energy-chains to withstand the tough operating conditions. The steep slope harvester collects grapes from vineyards with slopes up to 75%
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjQ0NzM=