Design, Construction and Testing of Meat Grinding Machine

Abstract

Meat is an essential nutritious food item needed for human consumption from which high quality proteins, minerals and essential vitamins are derived. However, certain categories of consumers such as the children, elderly and sick people might not be able to provide the requisite biting force for chewing of the meat. Thus they would only be able to consume meat in their grinded form. In order to address this problem, it becomes necessary to have a meat grinding machine. Meat grinders are either motorized or manually operated. This paper presents the design, construction and testing of an efficient single meat grinding machine with both manual and motorized mode of operation. To avoid failure of the machine, the calculated working stress of 21MN/m2 of the machine is kept within the value of the machine ultimate stress of 30MN/m2 and the calculated factor of safety of 1.4 is within accepted range for factor of safety which indicates that the design is safe. A functional test carried out on the machine shows that it has an efficiency of 69% and 73% for manual and motorized operation respectively. The utilization of this machine would enhance meat processing thereby creating employment. The machine can be used in the urban, rural area and with or without electricity.