Design and development of power operated banana slicer for small scale food processing industries

摘要

A power operated rotary banana slicer suitable for small scale processing was designed and developed based on engineering properties of banana varieties, namely Nendran and Dwarf Cavendish. This banana slicer mainly consists of feeders for round slicing, cutter, power transmission mechanism, base support and frame. The power operated rotary slicer with three blade cutter that was operating at 360 rpm speed was developed to overcome drawbacks of existing hand or power operated rotary slicers and to meet the demand of small scale processing industries. This slicer has slicing efficiency of about a 93–94% with effective capacity of about 100 kg/h for both varieties. The mean thickness of cut for both varieties was about 2.00 ± 0.194 mm, whereas mean roundness was of 0.84 and 0.70 for Nendran and Dwarf Cavendish varieties respectively.