Hand operated cassava chipping machine 

Freshly harvested cassava is highly perishable and deteriorates rapidly. The poor shelf life and bulkiness of the tubers poses a great problem in transporting the tubers  for marketing. To avoid heavy post-harvest losses, the roots are customarily processed into sundried chips. Cassava chips are used for preparation of flour which is consumed in the same manner as rice flour.  It also forms a major component in many animal feeds.  In industry it serves as a raw material for manufacturing starch, dextrin, glucose and ethyl alcohol. Machine chipping is highly economical where labour charges are higher or when family labour cannot be employed. Other advantages of this machine are moderate initial cost, accommodating all sizes of tubers, easy to operate requiring no special skill, production of uniform chips and adjustable chip thickness.
The motorised chipper developed is run with a 0.5 hp single phase motor through suitable belt drive. The feed hopper consists of two concentric rows of cylinders  and a ms circular disc carries two pairs of stainless steel blades.A brick masonry foundation with a sloping chute serving as chips outlet is constructed with the motor and the chipper installed over it. Necessary modifications have been incorporated to provide accessibility and facilitate removal of blades for sharpening and/or insertion of spacers for changing chip thickness. The square outlet made with flat ms walls below the disc guide the chipped tubers into the chute without spillage resulting from the centrifugal force of the rotating disc. The output of the machine, has been found to be 280, 655 and 1000 kg / h for chip thicknesses of  2.5, 5.3 and 9.9 mm, respectively.