Lemon Cutting Machine and Garlic Peeling Machine

Nagarajan (45) lives at Usilampatti, a small village 40 km away from Madurai in Tamil Nadu. He has studied up to the ninth standard. He is married and has two children. Being the eldest in the family, he supported the education of his younger brothers and sisters and got them married. He is the sole bread-winner of the family. His dream is to develop more machines, related to food processing, which are not available in the market.

Genesis

Nagarajan owns a small scale lathe workshop named Virgo Industry. The factory has been manufacturing accessory parts like aspirator, destoner, heat reducer and grinder used in the rice hulling units for the past 17 years. It operates from a very small and old rented house. Virgo Industry was founded by Nagarajan’s late father who used to provide support services to the nearby rice mills. This part of Madurai district is known for its high production of paddy. Over the last few years, continuous drought affected not only the farmers but also all dependent industries and most of the rice mills in the nearby areas have closed down. These circumstances forced the entrepreneur to seek some other avenues for survival. Nagarajan’s close interaction with the pickle manufacturers exposed him to the practices prevailing in the industry. Some of the local pickle manufacturing companies requested him to design and develop a system to peel off garlic for making garlic pickles. Nagarajan successfully designed and developed a garlic-peeling machine in 2002 after two years of hard work. Later, he developed a lemon cutting machine as well.

Innovation: Garlic peeling machine and lemon cutting machine

Video

M. Nagarajan has modified a garlic-peeling machine and a lemon cutting machine significantly and these improved machines address the two-fold problem of the pickle industry, namely, inefficiency due to low degree of automation, and short supply of labour during peak seasons, which limits capacity.

Garlic peeling machine

The garlic peeling machine consists of a 2 HP electric motor, blowers, a peeling chamber, inlet, outlet, exhaust pipe and drives. The peeling chamber has a provision for garlic inlet and a shaft on which the blades are arranged in such a manner that there are six rows and each row consists of four blades placed at an equiangular distance of 90 degrees. These blades are made of the same material that is used for power transmission. The arrangement of blades is in two consecutive rows. In one row, the blades intersect vertically and horizontally, and in the other row, the blades intersect diagonally. The alternate row has the same arrangement. The peeling chamber is cylindrical and the internal walls are serrated.

The drive consists of three shafts, pulleys with two grooves and single groove. The drives are transmitted with the use of V-belts. The machine consists of two blowers of different sizes. The purpose of the big blower is to push out the dust and the skin of garlic, removed by the rotation of blades. The purpose of the small blower is to remove moisture from the garlic while feeding it into the machine. A housing, made of a steel sheet, covers the entire mechanism. The manufacturing cost of a single prototype is Rs.52, 000/- inclusive of labor charge and other running costs.

How the machine works

The garlic is fed into the peeling chamber through the inlet chute. The power is transmitted from the two HP motor shafts through V-belts. The pulley, fitted on the shaft, rotates the small blower. Pressurized air from the small blower removes the excess moisture from the garlic on the way to the peeling chamber. A pulley fitted on the shaft rotates the shaft containing the blades. The garlic entering the peeling chamber is pushed by the pressurized air from the big blower to the rotating blade. Since the blades are rotating, they hit the garlic towards the serrated wall of the peeling chamber and there it gets peeled. At the same time, pressurized air from the big blower is allowed to pass in order to push out the dust and the skin of the garlic through the exhaust pipe. The peeled garlic from the peeling chamber is collected through the outlet by gravity. This big blower is rotated by the power transmitted from the pulley, fitted on the shaft.

Advantages

The machine has the capacity to peel 200 kg of garlic/hr. The garlic cloves thus obtained are of a uniform size and can be neatly and conveniently collected and recovered. Another feature of this machine is that it is easy to construct, operate, and maintain. The blower removes excess moisture in the garlic and the separation of husk is innovative. This machine helps to achieve greater productivity, is energy efficient and labour saving, and reduces the drudgery in the slow laborious process of peeling garlic. This machine can also be used in other food processing industries apart from the pickle industry.

Lemon cutting machine

The Innovation

This innovation can continuously cut large quantities of lemon into required shapes and sizes. This machine consists of the following main parts- electrical motor, shafts, pulleys, V – belts, chain sprocket assembly, bearings, rotating round table hopper, bevel gear and gear box consisting of bevel gear, channel C, piston-cylinder assembly with connecting rod, rotary cutter, framings and support, bolts and nuts, foundation, circular discs, connecting rod and flanges, half CAM lever mechanism and motor starter.

The innovation also includes two fixed hoppers, one conical and another circular; both having two outlets. When a taper disc, fitted in the circular hopper rotates, it makes the lemons move forward through a passage one by one. This passage is in the shape of a channel, which has the provision of a chain control regulatory mechanism in the center. This serves as a gripping system and ensures the movement of lemons subsequently into the cutting system. Before the lemon is cut, into eight pieces, there is a mechanical regulatory mechanism, which opens and shuts the inlet chute in the same interval of time to ensure that the lemons are cut in sequence. In the cutting chamber, the lemon is placed on the upper side of a multi edged cutter with four edges and fixed in position.

Subsequently, a plunger, which is fitted above, moves vertically to press the lemon to the cutter, and the lemon is cut with the system of four blades, facing four directions and without the shape being destroyed. The cutting blades cut the lemon into four slices with a single stroke of the plunger and in the next movement there is a diagonal cut that divides one entire slice into two. Thus a total of eight slices come through the outlet.

The machine is capable of cutting lemons ranging in size from 0.75 inches diameter to 2.5 inches diameter with the help of a spring loaded mechanism. A better grip on the lemon is also provided by this spring loaded mechanism which ensures uniformity in cutting. For packaging in smaller quantities, the lemon has to be cut into smaller pieces (12 to 16 pieces). Changes can be made in the present machine to do this as well as to grade the lemons. The machine is being fabricated in such a way that wastage of raw material is minimized. The innovator uses the portion of the metal sheets left, for making other parts. This results in lower cost of production.

Advantages

The slices of fruit produced by using this machine are of a uniform size, and can be neatly and conveniently collected and recovered. Well optimized power transmission ensures less consumption of electricity (7-8 units in 8 hours of operations). This device is labour saving -only one person is required to operate it. There is minimal wastage of the lemons in the cutting operation i.e. 100% of the yield is utilized. The machine is compact and made of stainless steel, which makes the process hygienic. The half CAM lever mechanism in the machine ensures that the lemons are fed to the cutting chamber one by one to avoid cluttering and this ensures proper cutting of the lemons. The synchronization of the movement of four-edged vertical blade and rotary horizontal blade ensures that the lemon is cut right across both the axes and this ensures removal of seeds without any effort. This parameter not only saves manpower cost and wastage due to improper cut, but also contributes to the quality of pickles (seeds in pickles often cause irritation to the consumer). The cutting capacity of this machine is 160 lemons/ minute or 450 kg per hour. This innovative technology has an edge over two other manufacturers, who make similar machines, in terms of the low initial investment (Price-Rs.100,000) and low operating cost Rs. 0.066. This machine is also easier to operate and maintain than existing alternatives.

From the social benefit perspective, the technology offers a less hazardous process for labourers. The labourers, usually women, who are employed in the pickle industry spend a considerable amount of time in cutting the lemon manually to the required shape and size. They often suffer from blisters on the skin while handling lemons as these are highly acidic. The labour currently being employed in cutting fruits could be utilized for any other more value-adding activity.

According to Nagarajan, the manufacturing cost of a single prototype is Rs. 82, 000/- inclusive of labor charges and other running costs. His selling price is Rs. 95,000/- which includes a profit of Rs.13, 000/-.

Recognition from the formal sector…

He finds the whole experience of innovation very inspiring and feels that this spurs him on to innovate further. Contrary to the experiences of most grass root innovators, Nagarajan’s innovations were accepted and appreciated for their commercial value by industry sources. S. Kulwant Singh, (General Manager–Operations), The Food Division of Cavin Kare certifies that they have purchased two garlic peelers from M. Nagarajan of Ms. Virgo Engineering works and these are working satisfactorily. He goes on to say that they had inspected the lemon-cutting machine developed by Nagarajan and are quite impressed with the machine. They are now planning to purchase the lemon cutting machine for their pickle processing unit at Gudur. They believe this will save a lot of manual labour and improve hygiene as well. S. Kulwant Singh acknowledges that Nagarajan is innovative especially in developing machines which are unique in nature. Besides, CavinKare is also encouraging and supporting Nagarajan's R&D efforts in other possible areas of food-processing. Their technical team from Chennai had visited Nagarajan's small workshop at Uslampathy (40Kms away from Madurai) on quite a number of occasions. CavinKare is a company which was started with Rs.50 k and is now giving Hindustan Lever (HLL) a run for their money in the food-processing business and its MD Mr. CK Ranganathan was the recipient of this year’s Economic Times Entrepreneur of the Year award.

Industry Analysis

Pickle manufacturing is a very labour intensive industry. The major reasons attributed to this could be the prevailing small scales and the process of preparation of pickles, which is an aggregation of small, specialized tasks. Most of the over 500 pickle manufacturers spread across the country with major concentration in South India operate at either the cottage, small or tiny industry scale with few exceptions. The consumption pattern is also skewed towards South India. Of late, the export of pickles has witnessed a rapid growth primarily due to the increasing Indian diaspora around the globe and increased awareness about Indian cuisine and accompaniments in western countries.

The industry employs a large number of labourers, particularly women. Even a small scale pickle manufacturing unit would on an average employ about 400 women. On the positive side, the industry has been a significant source of employment for rural and semi-urban women. However, low automation causes inefficiency and hence, makes processing expensive. Another important and noteworthy feature has been the seasonality involved in pickle manufacturing. It is primarily dependent on the availability of the fruits. In the case of lemons, the season is during April-June and September to mid- December. It is observed very often that availability of labour becomes the limiting factor for the industry during the season.

Current Status

The market research conducted by NIF reveals that the pickle industry is very keen to adopt these devices developed by Nagarajan due to their low initial cost and high efficiency. Since this industry is concentrated in South India, Virgo Industry would have some additional advantage over other suppliers from other regions in terms of physical proximity and direct access to market. Nagarajan had already sold 12 Garlic Peeling Machines in the market and later on, he was advised by GIAN on ways to protect intellectual property. In fact, he also sensed the problem of his technology being copied by some fabricators in the region, and he stopped the sale of the lemon-cutting machine during that time. He requested NIF through its regional collaborator Sustainable- agricultural and Environmental Voluntary Action (SEVA) to file a patent for these two machines. Now, since both the patents have been filed by NIF, he is willing to take his innovations to market. NIF has also sanctioned Nagarajan a sum of Rs.1, 87, 000 from the Micro Venture Innovation Fund for the commercialization of the Lemon Cutting Machine and after successful commercialization Rs.15, 000 has been repaid by the innovator.

In addition, parallel efforts have been put in for technology licensing. A catalogue of the innovations has already been mailed to two manufacturers of food processing who have expressed interest.

But the only limiting factor is that the capacity of Virgo Industry is small. It can manufacture only three lemon- cutting machines a month or four to five Garlic Peeling machines. He has a small team of five people. Two of them are trained (Industrial Training Institute) and the others are semi-skilled.