Show HN: Sorting Two Metric Tons of Lego
I work for a mill that cleans and sorts grains and beans (taking the rocks out, stems out, etc.), and it's fascinating to see the parallel invention of something really similar! We have a bunch of different steps:1) Air is blown through the product and any dust is taken out.
2) The product is run through a bunch of screens that take out anything too big or too small.
3) The product is put through a gravity separator to separate based on mass.
4) Finally, the product is put through an optical sorter (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0gWUeqzk_o) which uses blasts of air to push out unwanted materials from a stream of falling product.I'm sure you could use the same process for Legos. Not sure about how to distinguish between branded and unbranded Legos though.