Design and Testing of Accurate Dicing Control System for Fruits and Vegetables

It is hard to control the dicing size of current fresh-cutting devices for fruits and vegetables precisely, and this can be influenced by complex working environments. This paper looks at traditional three-dimensional fresh-cutting machines and, apart from analyzing the force-and-motion equation to...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Song Mei, Fengque Pei, Zhiyu Song, Yifei Tong
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2022-09-01
Series:Actuators
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0825/11/9/252
Description
Summary:It is hard to control the dicing size of current fresh-cutting devices for fruits and vegetables precisely, and this can be influenced by complex working environments. This paper looks at traditional three-dimensional fresh-cutting machines and, apart from analyzing the force-and-motion equation to determine the minimum rotational speed of the roller, the cross-cutting tool’s independent drive system, the speed detection system of the material before dicing, and shaft-speed monitoring have also been analyzed in order to develop precise control technology for three-dimensional fruit and vegetable dicing by considering dicing input-speed detection and by fine-tuning the cross-cutting tool’s dicing speed. Performance tests are carried out on the prototype before and after improvement. The results show that when the size of carrots and potatoes was 11 mm × 10 mm × 10 mm and 11 mm × 10 mm × 12 mm, the slice thickness and strip thickness error before improvement were 20% and 5%, respectively. Due to the structural limitations, the slice error was large, but the strip error as ideal. The dicing error was greater than 15% due to the different damping coefficients of the materials and the variable speed movement. After the adjustment, the overall dicing error was less than 10%, and the accuracy and stability were higher.
ISSN:2076-0825