Development of a lemon cutting machine.

Cutting of lemon and other similar fruits is conventionally
done manually by sharp knife, which is labor
intensive and often un-hygienic. In the present work, a
device has been designed and developed for cutting of
lemon hygienically into four pieces of similar shape based
on stationery cutters and rotating centralizing/locating slit
plate concept. Machine has a unique knife assembly consisting
of two bird wing shaped knives, joined by welding
perpendicularly to a vertical knife, so that the lemon can be
cut into four pieces in a single sweep. Six numbers of
rotating centralizing/locating slit plates are welded on to
the side plates and the plates carry a groove on its inner
face, to enable the wing shaped knife to complete the horizontal
cut. The rotating slit plates, having centralizing angle
of 90°, are rotated by an electric geared motor. The prototype
machine has capacity of over 5,000 lemons/h with a
power consumption of 0.11 kW.