Abstract

This study discusses the design and fabrication of a pandan slitter machine that will remove the thorns and cut the leaf into working strips that are set for air drying. The study includes the evaluation of the machine in terms of its capacity per unit time and the evaluation of the slit leaves in terms of quality such as straightness and consistency of width. The prototype was divided into three main mechanisms that governs the slitting of leaves, removal of the thorns and movement of the leaf. Evaluation of capacity and quality of output were based from 5 leaves producing 30 strips per process. The 3D design of the slitter machine was made using Autodesk Fusion 360 software, afterwards, the prototype was fabricated in order to evaluate the actual performance of the slitter machine by installing instrumentations such as feed mechanism, sensors and cutting mechanism. And finally, evaluation of machine performance was done by comparing the actual output produced by the prototype to the output produced by conventional or manual method. It was observed that the average time for the manual stripping and removal of thorns is 1.798 minutes while the average time it takes for the machine slitting and removal of thorns is .5298 minutes. The result of the study proved that the slitter machine significantly improves the output by 239%.