Journal of Taiwan Agricultural Research

Author:Lien-Sheng Liang, Kuo-Hsiang Hwang and Tyng-Horng Chou

Abstract:

The stalk cutting machine for shiitakes consists of three major components- a singularizing feeder, an orientating unit and a cutter set. Through the three floor singularizing feeder with a designed conveyor speed ratio of 1:2:4, the processed shiitakes falling down from the upper floor to the lower floor are displaced at increasing amounts to separate with adjacent ones. Each processing line of the orientating unit comprises two twisted conveying belts. A V-shape carrying gap with an increasing width through the processing line is purposely formed in-between these belts to keep stalk sides of the shiitakes downward. When being transported through the disk cutter set, the orientated shiitakes are then cut off their stalks at desired lengths. From experimental results, more than 85% of the processed shiitakes were cut successfully when the orientating unit was operated individually. However, when the whole stalk cutting machine was put in action, the handling capacity of this machine and the percentage of shiitakes successfully cut were reduced tremendously due to the non-uniform feeding at the singularizing feeder and the backward bouncings of shiitakes at the orientating unit. The best case of this machine operated continuously showed that the percentage of shiitakes successfully cut was about 82% with a handling rate at 86 shiitakes per minute neglecting small shiitakes dropping from the gap of orientating belts. The handling ability of this machine would be increased if further improvements were properly made on the singularizing feeder and the orientating unit.

Key words:Shiitake, Auto-orientation, Stalk cutter

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