Designing a coconut husk removal machine

[pradeepkumarl]

Hi friends,
This is my first post here in this forum. hope to hear as well as contribute to this forum in whatever best possible ways I can.

Here I am with my problem domain. peeling off the coconut husk from the coconut. especially when the coconut husk is totally dried up. This is when the husk is removed and the copra is extracted from the coconut.

Kindly pour in ideas as of the optimum ways to achieve this. Later we can look in how to design and implement it.

I got this idea as formers in my village spend hours together using the traditional method and I wonder why there is no such invention to replace this.

All ideas are welcome. Let's start with one which I thought.

1. In hospitals for a bone fracture doctors cover the injured part using Plaster of Paris. the POP becomes rock solid after drying up. When removing the POP, doctors make use of a wheel with sharp edges to cut the plaster. The strange point is that if we place the wheel on our skin the skin does not get cut. Can we use somewhat the same approach to peel out the husk too?

Kindly share your deep thoughts on this..

Regards,
Pradeep

 

[FredGarvin]

When the husk is removed, what is the desired condition you want the husk to be in? In other words, can the husk be crushed slightly to make it easier to take off?

Other questions:
- What kind of rate, i.e. coconuts per minute?
- Do you do one at a time or do you want to do multiple coconuts at any instant?
- What kind of post processing are you doing downstream of this operation?

 

[Mech_Engineer]

It's a good idea to look at how the husks are traditionally reemoved, and then think about how you could replace a person with a mechanism.

From what I remember, traditionally a husk is rmoved with a sharp stick in the ground, slamming the husk on to it and prying. It seems you could make something that pierces the husk and pries, similar to this.

Alternatively, it might be possible to take a route similar to an apple corer/peeler.

 

[pradeepkumarl]

When the husk is removed, what is the desired condition you want the husk to be in? In other words, can the husk be crushed slightly to make it easier to take off?

Other questions:
- What kind of rate, i.e. coconuts per minute?
- Do you do one at a time or do you want to do multiple coconuts at any instant?
- What kind of post processing are you doing downstream of this operation?

The husk is hard. The aim is to simply remove the husk and get the coconut and then it can be broken in half to get the copra out. First let me try to design a better alternative to to traditional approach wherein the husk is removed using a sharp pointed stick and piercing the coconut on the sharp end and removing it manually..

 

[pradeepkumarl]

It's a good idea to look at how the husks are traditionally reemoved, and then think about how you could replace a person with a mechanism.

From what I remember, traditionally a husk is rmoved with a sharp stick in the ground, slamming the husk on to it and prying. It seems you could make something that pierces the husk and pries, similar to this.

Alternatively, it might be possible to take a route similar to an apple corer/peeler.

Yes that correct. the traditional approach is the one that you have mentioned. How could I replace the existing with a good design to reduce the effort and to increase the productivity.

Once the hard husk is removed we need to get to the next shell by removing all the coir surrounding the inner shell. that is one more challenge.

 

[cadraftsman]

I love youtube (and google). You can find ANYTHING.

 

[pradeepkumarl]

I have already seen that video. What i initially asked in this post was to post new ideas and not ale\ready designed full fledged machine. Moreover that machine is too costly.