Design and fabrication of automatic banana leaf cutting machine

Abstract Hotel business is one of the successful businesses in India. Most of the Indian hotels use banana leaves to serve the food to the customers. Banana leaves are large, bendable, and waterproof. They impart a fragrance to food that is cooked and served on them, steaming with banana leaves imparts an intelligent sweet flavor and a good smell to the dish. Many hotels serve food in a full banana leave which increases the cost. When the leaves are cut into round plates from a half leaves it reduces the cost as well as the consumption of leaves. Hence most of the hotels started to reduce the consumption of leaves for cost saving as well as to utilize the leaves efficiently. Two or more labors are employed to cut and arrange the leaves manually. To overcome the difficulties faced by the labor, it is essential to automate the process. The Banana leaf is cut into round shape by the machine with minimum wastage. The components of the project are hydraulic cylinder, pneumatic cylinders, circular blade, motor, ultrasonic sensor and Arduino module. Initially the leaf is fed into machine and is kept below the hydraulic cylinder. When the sensor detects the presence of leaf, the pneumatic cylinder is actuated which forces the blades on the leaf to cut into the round shape and collected in the basket. In the proposed method, the issues faced by hotels in the banana leaf plate cutting process are considered and remedies are proposed. About 60 plates can be manually cut per hour but in this machine the outcome is increased to 100 plates per hour. Power consumption is about 30 units per day. Factors like economy, more yield, rapid process, saving manpower and many others are concentrated.