Design and Development of Bamboo Craft Splitting and Slicing Machine

Abstract

The research project entitled "design and development of bamboo craft splitting and slicing machine” was aimed to increase the working capacity as well as time and labor saving for bamboo splitting and slicing process. The machine consists of five main parts namely, steel frame, gear train, chain conveyor, blade unit and power transmission system.  The speed of motor for bamboo splitting unit was selected at 500, 700 and 900 rpm. and the speed of motor for bamboo slicing unit was selected at 1300, 1400 and 1500 rpm.  The performance parameters studied were bamboo splitting capacity, bamboo slicing capacity, bamboo slicing loss, electrical consumption and economic analysis of bamboo splitting and slicing machine. The performance test of the machine showed that the optimum speed for splitting and slicing were 1,500 and 700 rpm, respectively.  The average capacity of splitting and slicing were 7.12 sticks per min and 5.65   slices per min, respectively.  The electrical power consumption for bamboo splitting and slicing were 1.87 and 0.79 kW-h, respectively. Based on the test results the capacity for bamboo splitting and slicing of the machine were approximately 2.6 and 2.7 times higher than traditional manual operation of bamboo splitting and slicing methods, respectively.  An economic analysis further showed that the operation cost of the machine was 90.1 Bath per hour with the break even point of 156 hour per year.  Considering the working hour of 300 hour per year, the pay back period of the machine was found to be 2.5 years.