Raising the bar on sortation

With its customers in the waste and recycling industry top of mind, Machinex has developed sorting equipment that can deliver accuracy and profitability, and the evolution of its MACH Hyspec® optical sorter is a shining example.

The MACH Hyspec® optical sorter was a market pioneer, introducing a high-speed, short wave infrared (SWIR) hyperspectral system, in conjunction with custom high-speed/high accuracy classification algorithms, to the waste and recycling industry. Its versatility allows it to serve several markets such as single-stream, municipal solid waste, construction & demolition, organics, plastics and scrap metal. More recently, the unit has evolved to combine with the MACH Vision ™ artificial intelligence (AI) and a user-friendly machine interface showing operators real-time data on their material stream.

“The evolution of the machine is amazing,” says David Marcouiller, executive vice president of sales engineering at Machinex. “With how quick it’s changing, and the new capabilities of the machine, it’s definitely impressive.”

The key to that evolution has been Machinex’s pursuit of continuous development, spearheaded by the company’s in-house specialists that have included MRF system designers and product managers for various equipment types, among others. By bringing together experts from across the recycling equipment spectrum, Machinex has ensured the MACH Hyspec® would not only excel at its specific task, but also serve as a critical and perfectly integrated part of a larger turnkey solution.

“We went from a cruder machine at the beginning to what is now a lot more user-friendly for customers and gives them more feedback,” Marcouiller says. “Now, it’s a machine that has the AI’s abilities and better decision-making and can report changes or trends to the operator in the MRF.”

The MACH Hyspec® is designed and developed with the unique perspective of a turnkey MRF integrator. Unlike other single-unit optical sorters, the MACH Hyspec® is part of Machinex’s proprietary line of sorting equipment, engineered to fit seamlessly within a high-performance system. Optimized for maintenance, ergonomics and safety, the machine is built with the operator’s needs in mind.

Machinex doesn’t just focus on optimizing the optical sorting unit in isolation; its team considers the entire MRF ecosystem. This approach means the MACH Hyspec® is not just a standalone unit, but is a fully integrated component, designed to work in harmony with surrounding equipment to deliver complete MRF performance.

The sorter's performance can be tuned to specific needs by adjusting key elements such as its transport and feed points, ejection hoods and optimizing accessories, which contribute to the performance of the MACH Hyspec® within the broader MRF system. By engineering these critical components, Machinex has created an optical sorter that not only excels individually but also can elevate the performance of the entire turnkey solution and ensure maximum efficiency.

“What I’m always amazed to see is how many products you would not be able to recognize or pick that can be tackled by this machine,” Marcouiller says. “Recycling is not necessarily homogenous with the products that go into a sorter, so the technological advancement of these machines to cope with the variety of materials from across the world is amazing.”