Design and development of a table mounted manual seed cracking machine for a hard seed (Deocla Reflexa Hook F)

Abstract

Dioclea reflexa seed is a non-conventional seed widely used in the south-eastern Nigeria for culinary and herbal purposes. In using it for these purposes, cracking of the seed to expose the cotyledon is a necessity. However, the seed is seen as one of the hard seeds difficult to crack manually. This work hereby presents the conceptual solution and the fabri-cated prototype of the manually operated machine to efficiently and safely crack the seed. The design concept involved pushing the seed into a converging passageway with the at-tendant reaction of the narrowing space-seed interface developing a force that will eventually crack the seed. The machine developed, which also serves as a proof of the concept was fabricated from mild steel using established methods of metal fabrication. The machine pro-totype was evaluated for seed cracking efficiency as well as the perceived ease of use by operators. Results shows that the machine achieved 96% cracking efficiency and the average response of the test subjects invited to operate the machine was that it is easy to operate.