Design and development of mango stone decorticator

Abstract

A machine for removal of kernel from mango stones was designed, fabricated and tested. The major component includes jaw assembly, cutter and pneumatic cylinders. The stones are fed into jaw assembly manually and then cutter cuts the stones into two pieces transversely. The positioning of jaw assembly and movement of cutter is done by use of pneumatic cylinder. Before feeding, stones were dried to 12-15% moisture content so that shell gets detached from the kernel. Machine has been fabricated for cutting 18 mangoes stone in a batch. Machine was tested to cut the stones by applying 6-8 bar pressure on cutter. The results showed that machine cuts the stones into two pieces at low temperature and high pressure more efficiently.