Development of Compact Sized Cashew Nut Shelling Machinery (Part 1)

Syntheses of Effective Manual and Semi-Automatic Shelling Methods

Abstract

The physical properties of cashew nut were investigated and the mechanical properties relating to shelling were studied, which yielded results indicating that the hard structure of the nutshell normally required a force in the range of 50-70kgf to crack under ‘plane surface’ loading on a ‘raw’ nut, but if specific conditions were chosen such that ‘blade’ loading were applied to a ‘treated’ nut across its ‘width’ the cracking force was reduced to approximately 20kgf. A survey on the need of cashew nut famers and manufacturers for appropriate shelling machinery indicated definite needs for both the manually operated and power driven shellers. Design considerations on the manually operated sheller utilized the new principle of press-twist actions of the sheller's blade resulted in two versions of the manually operated sheller and one semi-sutomatic sheller.