Angular rotary macadamia nut cracker machine

Abstract

This research aims to design and construct small-scale angular rotary macadamia nut cracker machine, using angular rotary striking mechanism. The proposed machine can crack 3 sizes of macadamia nuts - 17-22 mm, 23-28 mm, and 29-34 mm diameter with no need for separation size before feeding into the machine. Results of the experiment showed that the proposed angular rotary macadamia nut cracker machine could be used exactly as designed. Its average efficiency in separating sizes before cracking was 83% with overall productivity of 7.75 kilograms per hours. With regard to cracking process, it was found that weight of the cracked macadamia nut was 29.75% of the whole macadamia fruit. The other 70.25% was weight of the shell. Furthermore, it was also found that, regarding quality of the cracked macadamia nuts, the whole-nut quality was 39%, the half-nut quality was 44% and the broken- nut quality was 17% respectively.