08-16-2017, 10:47 PM
DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OF AUTOMATED VEGETABLE CUTTING
MACHINE
Automation was the rage of the engineering world. The investigation on the existing vegetable cutting machine
reviews the following drawbacks such as high investment cost, the contamination, additional manpower and time
consumption caused by manual processing. The setup involves a hopper arrangement and the pressure block is
actuated by a pneumatic cylinder, and has a reciprocatory motion along the vertical length of casing, while the
cutting grid remains fixed. The air supply to the cylinder is controlled by a solenoid actuated DCV, which is
controlled by a microcontroller. The entry of vegetable into the grid apparatus is controlled using a pneumatic
cylinder along with a single bar mechanism. The vegetables are feeded via inclined tube. A tray is placed at the
bottom of the apparatus to collect the vegetable pieces after processing. Variable pressure setting for cutting
different vegetables is carried out by the microcontroller. The intricacy involved with such a system is the type of
vegetables it can process. The system is advantageous in the fact that existing automation is high in cost, and the
power consumption is high. The proposed work is benefitted by pneumatic power, which is abundant.
In the late 90 s, automation was the rage of the
engineering world. The best of the minds, rallied day
and night to bring forth improvements of significant
magnitude, something which could make an impact in
the day-to-day life. Today, its an plethora of fields
which have embraced with automation, from
manufacturing to food processing, biomedical and
pharmaceutical industries. In such a scenario, domestic
applications have also been developed with the common
man in mind. Of late, processes which were manual
before are slowly being converted to semi-automated
and automated nature. Manual cutting of vegetables is
still prevalent, in hostels of educational institutions,
marriage catering services and even in restaurants,
which can cater to a whole set of varying customer
tastes and preferences. The amount of vegetables to be
cut for the dishes always remains higher than actually
what s consumed. The associated difficulties like time
constraint, contamination, etc. make it pretty difficult
for any person handling the job. Therein, arose a need to
automate the process of vegetable cutting, and here we
are with a proposal which can aid in easing the load off
the people associated with it.
1.1. Existing automated vegetable cutter
and its demerits
The automatic vegetable cutter is a Chinese
manufactured one, currently available in the market.
The cutter operates on the concept of rotating grid ,
wherein, the cutting grid is rotating inside a casing,
powered by an ac motor. The vegetables are fed via the
hopper arrangement, at the top. The cutting grid rotates
at a high speed which cuts the vegetables as they pass
through them. The cutting grids are varied according to
the need of the customer. The shapes of the cut
vegetable vary with the change in cutting grids.