Design and Fabrication of Manual Operated Tamarid (Tamarindus indica L.) Seed Separation Machine

Tamarind fruit contains 30% pulp, 40% seed and 30% shell by weight. Conventional method of tamarind seed separation was laborious and time consuming. In traditional practice for removal of seed from 1 kg of fruit 0.67 man hour was required. At times traditional method of hand beating results in finger injury. Hence there is a need for development of hand operated tamarind seed separation machine with low cost for separation of the seed without changing the structure of the fruit. Various physical properties of tamarind fruit were considered for design and fabrication of machine. This manual operated tamarind seed separation machine consists of rotating pulley with groove for placing the fruit, cutting knife, rotating handle, mounting frame. The physical properties such as length, width, thickness, sphericity, surface area and bulk density of tamarind fruit were observed as 93.94mm, 15.37mm, 11.73mm, 0.2734, 206.63mm 2 and 61.73 kg/cm³ respectively. The cutting efficiency was 82%, where as theoretical and effective machine capacities were 4.83 kg/hr and 3.14 kg/hr respectively. Overall operating efficiency of the machine was 65.13%. Cost of seed separation operating by using fabricated machine was 6 where as 15 in conventional method. The cost of equipment was worked out to the 1, 500 which is very much cheaper than the machine available in market. Finally it has been concluded that this equipment is useful and economical for all tamarind growing farmers.