TECHNICAL INNOVATIONS FOR DEVELOPING COUNTRIES: THE CASE OF A HUMAN-POWERED FRUIT BLENDER

There are several electric blenders available in the market today which uses electric motor to drive a blade in order to blend food items, but product availability and reliability are important factors for sustainability. A human-power blender uses alternative power generation sources to operate the blender. Having highlighted areas of possible applications of human powered machines, the aim of this work is to design a manually operated blender which has an efficient operation. In this design, the electrical components of a typical blender are replaced by a gear train system designed to multiply human efforts for maximum efficiency. The driving mechanisms of this blender are gears and shafts which were cast and machined respectively. When tested, the blades of the blender were able to achieve speeds that were 8 times more than the input speed