Rich Grise wrote:

Pete C. wrote:
Rich Grise wrote:
Pete C. wrote:
Karl Townsend wrote:

I built ten little SS apple labeling units a few years ago. The
last unit polishing took maybe 20% of the time that unit one did.

When are you going to start laser marking the apples and eliminate all
the little stickers?

Do you mean burn the mark into the apple itself?

Exactly. I know they have been testing the process, not sure how much
progress it's made to commercial implementation.

Well, I'm no greenie or anything like that - I buy day-old bananas because
they're about 1/2 off, and that sort of thing[1], but envisioning apples
with burn marks on them (a brandin' ahrn springs to mind) kinda gives me
pause - like, how well did the wound get cauterized? Breaking anything's
skin is essentially ringing the dinner bell for hungry wild microbes. And
when apple flesh is exposed to air, it starts reacting - when I'm going to
use the apple, how much of it under the burn mark do I have to throw away?

The laser certainly cauterizes just fine, that's why it's used on human
surgery. The depth that the laser burns to is also easily controlled, so
it only affects the surface, not all the way through the exterior.