DEVELOPMENT OF AN ELECTRICALLY OPERATED CASSAVA SLICING MACHINE

Labor input in manual cassava chips processing is very high and product quality is low. This paper presents the design and construction of an electrically operated cassava slicing machine that requires only one person to operate. Efficiency, portability, ease of operation, corrosion prevention of slicing component of the machine, force required to slice a cassava tuber, capacity of 10 kg/min and uniformity in the size of the cassava chips were considered in the design and fabrication of the machine. The performance of the machine was evaluated with cassava of average length and diameter of 253 mm and 60 mm respectively at an average speed of 154 rpm. The machine produced 5.3 kg of chips of 10 mm length and 60 mm diameter in 1 minute. The efficiency of the machine was 95.6% with respect to the quantity of the input cassava. The chips were found to be well chipped to the designed thickness, shape and of generally similar size. Galvanized steel sheets were used in the cutting section to avoid corrosion of components. The machine is portable and easy to operate which can be adopted for cassava processing in a medium size industry.