Abstract:
Mango is one of the commercially important fruit crop in India.
Raw mango available during the peak seasons can be used for the
preparation of pickles, mango in brine solution etc. Pickle is one of
the major item in Indian cuisines. Mango can be made available
throughout the year by reducing losses and proper storage
practices. The main unit operation during the pickling process is
destoning and cube cutting. In small scale processing industries,
slicing is carried out manually with sharp knives. The manual slicing
is labour intensive, time consuming and involves drudgery of work.
To overcome this limitation, a hand operated Mango Destoner cum
Cube Cutting Machine was developed. The developed mango
destoner and cube cutting machine consists of a destoner unit and a
mango slicing unit. The pushing guide press the raw mango placed
over a blade assembly. Raw mangoes are pushed vertically through
the stationary blades. As the pusher moves down they are sliced.
The sliced mango cubes fall by gravity into the tray kept at the
bottom. The nylon guide on the pusher helps in pushing all the slices
out of the blade assembly. The average throughput capacity of the
destoner unit with Model-1 blade was found to be 68.66 kg/hr and
that with Model-2 was 72.68 kg/hr. The average efficiency and
percent loss during the destoning operation with Model-1 was found
to be 82% and 17.25% and that with Model-2 was 75% and 24.21%
respectively. The developed slicer could produce mango slices at
capacities two to three times higher than manual slicing. The cost of
the equipment is about Rs.2000.
