DESIGN AND MANUFACTURING OF THE FORMING EQUIPMENT COMPONENT FOR 5 KG RICE VACUUM PACKAGING MACHINE

• Main Author: NOVADRI SUPARMAN (NIM : 13105054); Pembimbing 1 : Ir. Ign. Pulung Nurprasetio, MSME; Pembim, ADRIANUS
• Format: Final Project
• Language: Indonesia
• Online Access: https://digilib.itb.ac.id/gdl/view/14675
• Institution: Institut Teknologi Bandung

Rice is the main staple food in Indonesia. In supermarkets, rice grain is placed in fabric or plastic bags. In order to better preserve the rice grain, the rice in the plastic bag <br /> <br /> <br /> is vacuum-packed. In addition, vacuumed rice package is relatively slim, easy to arrange in a box, and may withstand certain impact force during transportation. This research project is one part of a bigger attempt to develop rice vacuum packaging machine. The capacity of the rice package is set to be five kilograms, which is the most common size available in the supermarkets. This work is made possible through a collaboration between the Faculty of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (FMAE) – Institut <br /> <br /> <br /> Teknologi Bandung (ITB) and PT. Norita Flexindo, a local packaging company located in Cileungsi, Bogor. Over all, the rice vacuum packaging machine consists of four stations, namely the preparatory station, opening and filling, vacuuming and sealing, and finally releasing station. The scope of this report is in the design and manufacturing of the forming equipment component of the machine. In this case, after the plastic bag has been filled with rice grain, it needs to be formed such that the grains are equally distributed within the volume of the bag and the width will be relatively uniform. Since very little information is available, the design is accomplished through several simple experiments, literature survey, and interviews. After performing the experiments with the existing packaged rice grain, it is revealed that the best way to form and uniformly distribute the grains may be obtained by putting the bag inside an enclosure and shaking the bag from the bottom. The translation into machine design results in a mechanism, in which the plastic bag is constrained between two steel plates across the width of the bag while being filled, followed by intermittent shaking using pneumatic actuator from the bottom. The manufacturing is currently on-going about 80% at PT Norita Flexindo’s machine shop. It is hoped that upon completion of the prototype, testing may be executed to evaluate the effectiveness of the vacuuming and sealing processes. Based on the result of the above test, modification may be designed. The final quest is to develop a marketable prototype of the rice vacuum packaging machine.