ABSTRACT

The research interest was on the design, fabrication and testing of a black velvet tamarind shelling machine. The machine is manually operated considering the income level of users and location of the fruit where there is inadequate source of electric power. With the boredom, low production output and efficiency associated with using hand to shell it, it was necessary to develop a machine that can do the same task. Prior to fabrication of this machine, some engineering properties where determined and obtained from labouratory experiment in order to get the required parameters and measurements for the machine. The shelling action is achieved by the oscillatory motion made by the shoe. The oscillatory action is achieved by converting the linear motion of the handle to oscillatory motion and the force applied uses the principle of attrition and shear force to shell the fruit. The shelled fruit and its shell pass through the sieve into a receiving container from where it is separated manually. The machine was fabricated using locally sourced materials and it can be used anywhere since it is not constrained by source of power. The performance of the machine was observed to have a shelling efficiency of 90%, wholesomely shelled fruit efficiency of 88%, mechanical damage of 3%. Throughput capacity of 5.78kg/hr and material capacity of 2.5 9kg/hr.