Design and Fabrication of Leafy Vegetable Shredding Machine

Abstract

With the growing world population, the need for vegetables due to its economic importance, nutritional value and viability cannot be overemphasized. In an attempt to add value to vegetables before domestically using them, a motorized electric- driven machine has been developed in order to circumvent the challenges of time consumption, contamination and injuries associated with the manual process of shredding vegetables using sharp knife. Shredding of vegetables is a process of cutting vegetables into thin slices or pieces using a sharp knife, food processor or grater. The vegetable shredding machine which works on shear principle was designed and fabricated using locally sourced materials from the opinion of new idea and tested. The performance test evaluation shows that the machine driven by a 1hp electric motor has an average performance cutting time of 30.2seconds for a full hopper volume of 2319. 8cm3 which is equivalent to 78.87kg of vegetables with an efficiency of 89.35% and a throughput capacity of 9400.48kg/h. The shredding processing machine is made up of simple components that can be easily assembled. Thus,
the operation and maintenance is quite easy.