Design and Development of an Improved Plantain Slicing Machine

In this work, a simple efficient and economical plantain slicing machine was designed and constructed. The entire machine is a slider-crank mechanism driven by an electric motor via a v-belt, with the driven pulley borne on a shaft supported by two bearings. The slider comprises of the hopper (which houses the plantains), guide and stanchion. The mechanism consists of two cranks, each on either side. They are linked to the slider with the aid of a connecting rod through which motion is transmitted to the hopper (slider). The to and fro motion of the slider along the bed of the guide (which houses the cutting blade) achieves the desired chip formation. The machine has average efficiency of 93%, compared with 87% and 63% of chip cutter and domestic knife respectively, at tremendous reduction of time, cost of production, labour and operating capacity of 0.1124 /s (a plantain for 9s).The efficiency of this machine is far more than the existing ones. From the results obtained during performance evaluation, the average time required slicing 30 pieces of plantain of average length of 260mm, weight of 0.3kg and diameter of 65mm using domestic knife, chip cutter and the plantain slicer were approximately 1986s, 1487s and 267s respectively. Though this plantain slicing machine produces chips of uniform thickness like chip cutter but with higher efficiency and minimal human input. This improved machine is simple, hygienic, portable, detachable, easy to operate and maintain. It is suitable for both small and large scale productions of plantain chips.