Design and prototyping of a fruit peeling machine

• Main Author: Wong, Ze Qiang
• Other Authors: Lee Yong Tsui
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2019
• Subjects: Engineering::Mechanical engineering
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/78678
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

This report aims to explore and design an automatic fruit peeling machine targeted at cooked food, fresh fruit and fruit juice stall operators. The machine should be able to receive a bunch of fruits and vegetables and return them peeled. The final concept was selected using a design methodology which includes function analysis, morphological chart and embodiment design. The proposed design involves loading the fruits or vegetables into a hopper which delivers them one by one to be cut and peeled. Conveyors will feed each towards a knife to be split into two halves. Each half is then fed into a peeling channel, with the cut side sitting on the conveyor. The channel is lined with rows of blades on swivel handles, each pressed into the skin by a spring and peels a section of the skin as the piece is pushed through it. There was only enough time to prototype and test the blade and its handle. A single blade system was successfully created and tested. Each blade covers an average peel width of 1.5 cm. For a fruit like apple, there needs to be 12 blades to cover its full width. These 12 blades are to be arranged in four rows of three. It is expected that the completed machine will be able to peel 10 fruits in three minutes. Further development and testing are required to complete the device.