Measuring shellfish in a process environment
Zebra-Tech visited Cloudy Bay Mussel factory in Richmond, and Talley’s Mussel processing plant in Havelock to test the digital measuring board in a process environment by measuring shellfish length and width.
Visiting Cloudy Bay Mussel factory and the Talley’s Mussel processing plant
Both companies sell greenshell mussels to the world. From ease of use to data offload to cleaning, the Digital Measuring Board was put through it’s paces measuring greenshell mussels and a few dozen oysters.
The Digital Measuring Board is splash proof and manufactured from tough engineering plastics and marine grade stainless steel making it an ideal instrument for use in processing environments where salt water and bits of organic matter and grit are commonplace. Being wireless and battery powered, there are no cables to be concerned about.
The unit features a sturdy base which can be attached to a bench, or the unit can be moved around to different QC stations. Afterwards, it can be washed down with a hose.
Using the Digital Measuring Board:
Like most things, it takes a bit of practice to get the most out of the Zebra-Tech Digital Measuring Board. A few minutes is all it takes to configure the measuring board and work out the most comfortable way to take your measurements.
- For these tests we wanted to measure length with button A and width with button B and have both measurements on one line in our spreadsheet (together with sample number, time and date). The menu is accessed by pushing both buttons simultaneously, from there you can select one of four modes. We selected mode two.
- Picking up and positioning the sample, sliding the moving jaw into position and taking a reading…these are all repetitive tasks and we found our hands very quickly adjusting to make the process easier. Smaller mussel spat (below about 15-20mm width) did become tricky – below that size a caliper might be more suited.
Measuring shellfish
Measuring hundreds of shellfish was quick and easy, no paperwork or typing is needed and after sampling was finished, it was a simple matter to connect to an android device to offload the .csv file ready for emailing or opening in spreadsheeting software.
No measurements missed, no duplicate entries, no transcription errors, no lost or wet record books…the Zebra-Tech Digital Measuring Board is a huge time saver for measuring shellfish.
