Affordable Robotic Sorting for a Recycling Startup

Challenge

A new company entering the materials recovery space with a single-stream recycling facility needed an affordable sorting solution. As a startup, every dollar counts — they needed to classify and separate mixed recyclables at speed without the capital outlay of a traditional turnkey system.

Their small engineering team had strong Python skills but no robotics experience. They needed a system they could program, tune, and maintain themselves without relying on expensive integrator contracts. Equally important: a vendor who would pick up the phone when they hit a wall.

Solution

We worked directly with the customer’s team to configure a single-robot sorting cell built around their existing conveyor:

• 1x Adeeb Delta Robot for high-speed pick-and-place sorting
• Adeeb Robot Controller with Python API for custom classification logic
• EtherCAT Master Community edition for real-time conveyor synchronization
• Third-party vision camera integrated via the Python SDK

The team wrote their own material classification pipeline in Python using the Robot Controller’s native API. The Python interface gave them direct control over pick logic, sort destinations, and reject handling — no proprietary language to learn.

The EtherCAT Master Community edition provided the real-time conveyor tracking they needed at zero software cost, and the upgrade path to Professional remains available as they scale.

Results

The cell went from first power-on to production sorting in 3 weeks. The customer’s team handled the vision integration and sort logic themselves, calling on Adeeb engineering for motion tuning and conveyor sync configuration.

Sort accuracy reached 98.5% on a mixed PET/HDPE/aluminum stream at 150+ picks per minute — replacing six manual sorters on the line.

“We’re a startup — we can’t afford to wait three days for a callback. Adeeb’s team answered questions the same day, jumped on video calls to debug our Python scripts, and helped us tune cycle times over a single weekend. That kind of support is why we went with them.” — CTO, Recycling Startup