Design And Analysis Of Peeling Machine On Chinese Lantern Fruit

The Chinese lantern fruit, which is also called wintercherry, is a kind of perennial herb, of which the fruit has a spheroidal berry and lantern-like shape. Recently, the products made by Chinese lantern fruits enjoy the increasing popularity among customers with its edible and medical value and in consequence, the planting industry of lantern fruit has been developed rapidly. Nevertheless, the peeling procedure is done traditionally by hand in the deep processing enterprises, causing low efficiency and unnecessary waste of labor, restricting the farming and the development of deep processing enterprises greatly and resulting in a shortage situation. With the purpose of improving production efficiency, lowering the labor cost, and improving industrial competitiveness, this research work on the automatic peeling technique of the fruits and develop a sort of peeling device on the Chinese lantern fruits.Firstly, from the perspective of the material character of lantern fruit, the diameter of the peel and the berry and the length of the peel were measured. The average moisture content of the samples was determined. The breaking load measurement on the peel and berry and on the stem and berry were done. The study on the material character of lantern fruit provides the necessary data and theoretical basis for the peeling technique and device of the Chinese lantern fruit.Secondly, based on the theory of TRIZ which is an innovative design method, the structure schemes of the subsidiary mechanisms of the peeling machine were accomplished through contradiction matrix composed of engineering parameters and inventive principles and the relevant inventive principles of the separation principles. Compared with other peeling programs, the best peeling scheme was determined. Through the analysis of stress condition of the lantern fruit on the peeling device, the peeling mechanism analysis was done. According to the results of analysis, the main dimension and performance parameters were determined and the prototype was manufactured.Finally, a 4-factor and 3-level orthogonal experiment was conducted on the type of the roller, the motion parameters of the roller and the spiral conveyor and the freezing temperature of the lantern fruit. Through analyzing and processing the test data, the degrees of significance affected by the three factors were obtained and the optimal combination scheme of the parameters was determined.