Over the past several years, it has become apparent that the first place plastic from module wraps shows up is on the module feeder disperser heads. If there’s a picker issue or if there is an unwrapping issue and a sheet of plastic is somehow still in or on the module when it gets to the head, it will often get wrapped up on the feeder spiked cylinders. These sheets or pieces can stay for a few seconds or hours before it falls off on its own or removed by the gin crew.

As companies develop ways to remove the plastic in the seed cotton or lint stream somewhere in the ginning process, we can often see the plastic on the disperser head cylinders if there is no cotton in the feeder. There have been many discussions on this topic at various meetings such as the Beltwide over the years. One of the ideas that has rolled around and keeps rolling around is a camera to see the dispersers from the inside.

The Gin Lab has recently published a White Paper on the use of cameras and a design that you can build and install in your facility. We encourage you to download THIS PAPER and to consider installing this or something like this in your gin. While all the plans and materials are listed in this paper it does not constitute an endorsement of any particular brand. We hope this will help reduce contamination going forward as other removal techniques are developed.

DSF