Enhancement of yam pounding machine for automatic domestic and commercial optimal operations

Abstract

Today’s advancement in technology has prompted innovation of techniques for large scale food processing for domestic and industrial purpose. This tasks relevant engineering stakeholders with the development of better processing models. Food preparation and consumption is a daily necessity of man and this makes it important to innovate methods that simplify this routine in satisfying his natural appetite. Gelatinous diets such as pounded yam and also powdered ingredients or grains take substantial amount of time and energy when manually processed. For this reason, designing and fabricating an automatic machine for yam pounding would reduce the processing time, ensure safety, hygiene and reduced human effort. This automatic machine adopts an electromechanical mechanism for its enhancement. The mechanical parts use wood and mild steel whereas electrical parts use electronic components and a microcontroller. The aforementioned controller helps to automate the operation of an electric motor for pounding and also for stirring, based on sensor information obtained. The mechanical and electrical parts of this model were put together to realize a mini model with 0.2m and 0.1m as the designed diameter and height respectively. The designed model was able to be accomplished and prototype demonstrated, the torque value of 0 to 0.2Nm gives zero (0Rev/Min) of speed and zero (0W) of power. At torque values of 0.3 to 0.25 Nm gives a rise in speed and power to the magnitude of 15 to 60 Rev/Min, with the corresponding power of 0.47 to 1.57W respectively. This implies that the cooked yam is being processed. When the constant torque values of 0.24Nm was recorded against 75 to 105 Rev/Min of speed, with the corresponding power values of 1.89 to 2.64 W. This shows that the cooked yam has completely been processed and the microcontroller initiates an action to bring the process to an end as provided by the pseudocode for this model.