Design and parameter study of banana crown mechanical cutting device

Abstract

Banana mechanical crown cutting tool which is a critical component of banana crown cutting machine is designed and studied in this paper. Experiments were designed to optimize parameters of the cutting tool. Indexes are cut surface quality grade of banana crown, maximum cutting force and useful power consumption. For banana preservation, get high grade of cut surface quality is more significant than consume less energy. Results of experiments show that the optimum parameters are as follows: cutting speed is about 50–60 mm/s, number of cut sets are about 4–6, angle between thick cutter and axis of banana rachis is about 5°, width of thick cutter is about 8–14 mm, thickness of thick cutter is about 2–3 mm, edge angle of thick cutter is between 20° and 30°, width of thin cutter is about 10–14 mm and thickness of thin cutter is about 0.2–0.4mm. This study helps to make the completely mechanical postharvest treatments for banana postharvest treatments.