Abstract:
Potato is one of the commercially important vegetables in India which is exploited
in value added form such as canned potato, potato chips, french fries etc. The main unit operation
during the value addition process is slicing. A prototype model of potato slicer was developed to
make the process easy and less time consuming. The developed potato slicer consists of a
feeding unit, a slicing mechanism and a driving mechanism. The potatoes, fed manually in to the
hopper, fall by gravity into the cylinder at the bottom dead centre of the piston. They are pushed
horizontally to the stationary blades as the piston moves towards the top dead centre and thus
sliced. The wooden bush on the piston helps in pushing all the slices out of blade assembly. The
machine can be used to slice potatoes with minimum percent damage (about 4.02%). The slicing
efficiency of the machine is 95.93%. The average throughput capacity of the machine at crank
shaft handle speed of 24 rpm was found to be 121.42 kg/hr. The developed slicer could produce
slices and capacity six times higher than manually slicing.
