Design and fabrication of improved motorized plantain slicing machine for chips production

Abstract

The majority of small-scale food companies and shops in Nigeria are unable to meet the enormous demand for plantain chips because of a few crucial considerations. Being a semi-perishable crop, a significant number of plantains are lost to deterioration at the highest point of harvest. Adopting an efficient method for turning food into chips for year-round availability and preservation is vital to guarantee food security and minimize waste. Plantain slicing with a knife has always been a hard, time-consuming, and unclean process with poor results. Although the slicer can be used for domestic purposes, it was intended for usage in medium and small-scale industries. The plantain slicing machine's design and construction aim to address the aforementioned issues. The design parameters that have been determined are the belt and pulley size, the power requirement (P), and the shaft diameter (D). The complete apparatus consists of a slider-crank mechanism that is powered by an electric motor through a v-belt. The driven pulley is supported by two bearings on a shaft. The hopper, which holds the plantains, the guide, and the stanchion make up the slider. Two cranks, one on each side, make up the mechanism. Through the use of a connecting rod, which transfers motion to the hopper (slider), they are connected to the slider. The intended chip formation is accomplished by moving the slider back and forth along the guide's bed, which holds the cutting blade. The device, which operates on the shear cutting concept, can cut raw plantains into chips with consistent sizes in a shorter amount of time. In just two to three seconds, it can cut a raw plantain finger up to 70 mm in diameter. According to the performance evaluation results, it takes an average of 267 seconds to slice 30 plantain pieces with an average length of 260 mm, weight of 0.3 kg, and diameter of 65 mm. All that's needed for machine maintenance is appropriate cleaning after usage and lubrication of the spinning parts. Even while this plantain slicer uses less labor and is more efficient than a chip cutter, it nevertheless yields chips with a consistent thickness. This updated device is easy to use, clean, lightweight, removable, and requires less maintenance. Consequently, the aforementioned constraints will be removed with this new design's enhancement, making the processing of plantain chips quite simple.