![]() ![]() This was about 1/8 times that of the traditional one. The average time required for cutting a batch of 10 elephant apples by traditional method was 1153 ± 74.55 s whereas the designed cutter takes only 151 ± 8.96 s. ![]() Views of the final designed cutter and its evaluation After this process, the remaining sepal part of the fruit can be separated and sliced easily and processed further for making a number of value added products. When the fruit cutter dies moves upwards, it carries away the core part of the fruit. When the fruit is placed in between the two holder rings, the fruit cutter die moves downward with the help of the shaft to bore into the fruit. This handle design in such an orientation where relationships of hand forces relative to the hand and arm anatomical structures can provide critical information for determining the forces and stresses acting on the muscles, joints, and bones of the hand-wrist-arm system (Lee et al. A force distribution handle (lever mechanism) is attached to the cutter die which is a hand operated one. A movable fruit cutter die is placed on the upper side of the cutter, supported through two shafts which are attached to the platform. The purpose of placing two holder rings is to avoid the slipping of fruit as well as to avoid the upward movement of fruit during the operation. Two holder rings are placed in the instrument, one of them on the platform and another one which is an adjustable one is placed above the platform at a defined distance. The elephant apple cutter consists of fruit platform, fruit cutter die, fruit holder, handle and frame. As elephant apple is a complex hard fruit with irregular shape and size, sharpness of the cutter is to be designed in a way such that it is able to cut fruits of all sizes with minimum loss.īased on this, in this study a hand operated elephant apple core cutter was developed and performance of the designed cutter in terms of cutting time, capacity and sepal yield (Khurmi 1990 Onu and Okafor 2003). So there is a need to design a cutter for elephant apple to increase cutting speed and capacity. ![]() Consequently the quantity of fruits, a farmer can process is limited (Onyemelukwe 1991). The traditional cutting method of elephant apple is very slow and time consuming. It is therefore, important to cut elephant apples properly in order to facilitate the removal of core from fruit with minimum loss. Inadequate or improper cutting of elephant apple may cause problems in other processing stages such as separation of central core from the fruits. Further, there is a possibility for the operator to be subjected to injury. Since the fruit is layered with five closely fitted imbricate sepals, it is to be removed one by one thereby indulging more time, labour and loss. The fruit is hard and thick layered for which the knife must be ensured of sharped edged. It takes about 10–15 min per fruit depending on the skills of a person cutting the fruit. It has been an age-long traditional practice by the people that the fruit is manually cut by knife. It is not very popular as a fresh fruit for table purpose due to this particular criterion. 1999).Ĭutting of an elephant apple fruit is not only difficult but is also a time consuming affair. There are 5 closely fitted sepals enclosing numerous seeds embedded in a glutinous juice (Gopalan et al. Fruit is globose with accrescent calyx, 12.5–15 cm in diameter, aggregate of 15 carpels with large fleshy sepals tightly enclosing the true fruit. 2012), anti-inflammatory (Yeshwante et al. 2007 Deepa and Jena 2011) analgesic (Badrul et al. The plant has great medicinal value including antimicrobial (Nazma et al. Elephant apple ( Dillenia indica L.) is an underutilized fruit largely available in the sub-himalayan tract from Garhwal to Northeastern part of India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka (Nayak et al. ![]()
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