Design and fabrication of Automated Coconut Scraping Machine.

Abstract

Coconuts are a very popular fruit worldwide. They have a variety of uses, as well as health and nutritional benefits. The uses of coconuts range from cooking and nutrition to skin health, cancer prevention, beauty products, and fuel. Scraping coconut is a laborious and time-consuming process. The manual process requires the operator to both rotate and apply pressure to scrape out the flesh of the coconut. The commercialized coconut scraping machines that are available are not fully automated and still involve manual effort. The semi-automated process requires the operator to hold the coconut half-shell against a rotary blade usually powered by an electric motor. In both methods, the operator is presented with different risks of injury. This paper describes how an automated coconut scraping machine has been developed to solve the well-known challenges regarding grating coconuts. The design proposed in this study eliminates virtually all hazards related to coconut scrapers. It is a fully-automated machine that reduces both risk and effort on the part of the operator. The system incorporates an adjustable blade that allows movement along two axes. A clamping mechanism that moves in the third direction allows a three-dimensional movement. The mounting of the coconut half shell in the clamp takes no more than fifteen seconds. Upon mounting, at the push of a start button, the scraping of the coconut is completely automatic. Details of the design and development of the working model constitute the main contribution of this paper