In order to improve the efficiency and accuracy of the automatic material sorting pipeline, the application of the improved incremental PID algorithm in the material sorting pipeline is studied. In the classical incremental PID algorithm, the integral separation algorithm and the dead zone algorithm are introduced to adjust the speed of DC motor. The improved algorithm is applied to the physical model of material sorting pipeline, and compared with the classical incremental PID algorithm. The results show that the improved algorithm is effective and feasible, and its control effect is obviously better than the classical incremental algorithm.