DEVELOPMENT OF THE POTATO TUBER CUTTING PROTOTYPE

A locally made potato seed cutting prototype was designed, manufactured and evaluated. According to the physical and mechanical properties that related for cutting the prototype was designed. The prototype consists of three essential parts, included potato cutting system, power transmission and feeding systems. The prototype performance was evaluated at the variables of two potato varieties (Sponta & Diamond), three mass categories Cm1 (90 - 150g), Cm2 (150 - 210g) & Cm3 (210 - 300g) and three plunger speeds (0.08, 0.12 and 0.16 m/s). The evaluation parameters are the prototype productivity, cutting uniformity, cutting losses, mechanical injury and specific energy consumption.The proper uniformity of the cutting prototype of 76.8, 78.4 and 81.3 for Sponta and 68.2, 78.4 and 81.3 for Diamond were obtained at 0.08 m/s of the plunger speed for the three tubers mass categories, respectively. The mean value of the prototype productivity of 0.18 Mgh-1 was recorded at the proper condition. The lowest cutting losses for the tubers mass categories were obtained at 0.08 m/s of the plunger speed. Both of the manual and optimum mechanical cutting operations were recorded less than 5% of the injury. The estimated cost of the potato cutting prototype saved about 50% from the manual cutting.