Pearl Mini: Fixing Stuck or Leaking Ejector

Introduction

The Sovda Pearl Mini rejects defective product using a blast of compressed air through one of 64 ports. Each port is opened and closed using an electromagnet firing a ceramic seal.

When the Pearl Mini is new, manufacturing artifacts on the ceramic disk may cause ejectors to leak on occasion. This will decrease as the ceramic seal wears into place and seats properly.
Occasionally, something may get stuck in the ejector and cause leaking. This may be as small as an eyelash. 

This guide covers the remediation of either of these causes for a leaking ejector.

In many cases, the leak will resolve itself after a few minutes to a few hours of operation. If you do not want to spend time remediating this immediately, continue with your production and see if the leak goes away.

Identify the Leaking Ejector

1. On the main screen of the Pearl Mini, go to Dust Cleaning Settings
2. Set Clean Period to 0
   1. If you are unable to set Clean Period to 0, set the Interval to 60 and remove the air line to the wiper. Be aware that compressed air will come out of that tube in an hour.
3. From the side window of the machine, identify the black and silver ejector ports. One of these is leaking
4. Open the lower front door of the machine:
5. From inside the front of the machine, find the ejector ports identified in step 3. The ejectors are numbered left to right 1 through 64
6. Find the number of the leaking ejector. This can easily be done by covering the ejectors with your finger, then feeling for the compressed air leak, counting the ejector number as you go along.

Use “Valve Test” to seat the ejector seal or dislodge contaminants

1. Tap the blue & green person icon on the top right of your screen
2. The password is the day, hour and minute as displayed on the screen entered in “DDHHMM” format.
   1. Example: If the day/time is 14 November at 11:23 AM, the password will be 141123
3. Press Enter. JXO should be displayed.
4. From the home screen, press “Camera Settings”
5. Write down the Width value for the front and back camera
   You will need to re-set the width value at the end of this operation, or carryover will be unacceptably high. Width values vary machine to machine, so you must re-input the exact value for each camera. Please write down the values.
6. Set Width for both Front and Back to 10
7. From the home page, press "Valve Test" 
8. Under “Test Hole Site” or “Ejector” (depending on model), set the number to the number of the stuck ejector identified in the process above
   
   
9. Set the ejector speed to 150
10. Select “Single Ejector” or “Mono Hole” test. The ejector should start firing.
    1. If you cannot hear the ejector audibly firing, decrease air pressure on the machine until you hear the valve firing.
11. Allow the valve to cycle for 20 minutes. This should resolve the problem.

Additional Troubleshooting

If the problem is not resolved, you can try these additional steps:

1.  Vary Speed:
   1. Set the cycle speed to 100 and hit “Single Ejector” or “Mono Hole” test
   2. While the ejector is firing, rapidly tap the increase arrow for the test speed to increase the speed
   3. Increase the speed until the audible tone produced by the ejector turns into a hissing sound
   4. Decrease the speed down to 150
   5. Perform steps a-d a few times
2. Reduce or increase the air pressure and perform the “Valve Test” sequence again
3. Sort 50kg of coffee and see if the leak goes away.
4. From the home screen, press “Camera Settings”
5. Set the Width values for the front and back camera to the values you wrote down in step 5.

If the above steps do not remediate the problem, move on to the section below.

Remove the ejector block and clean the actuator

Please review this video and contact your TBA if you need additional assistance