Advance Journal of Food Science and Technology 7(10): 824-826, 2015

DOI:10.19026/ajfst.7.2516
ISSN: 2042-4868; e-ISSN: 2042-4876
© 2015 Maxwell Scientific Publication Corp.
Submitted: October ‎29, ‎2014 Accepted: December ‎18, ‎2014 Published: April 05, 2015

Research Article
Design of Sugarcane Peeling Machine Based on Motion Controller
Zhang Dehui
College of Mechanical Engineering, Inner Mongolia University for the Nationalities, Tong Liao,
028000, China

Abstract: Sugarcane is a common raw material for sugar, but in the process of machining, there will be suspended
solids in the cane juice, in order to process better, the sugarcane should be peeled. Traditional way of peeling is by
man, production efficiency is low. In this study, a kind of sugarcane peeling machine was designed based on motion
controller, it can realize the automation of input, peeling and output. It can make certain contribution for sugarcane
processing.

Keywords: Motion controller, peeling, sugarcane

INTRODUCTION

Sugarcane is a common economic crop, grown in

the south of China. It is commonly used to refine sugar.
According to statistics, about 80% materials for refining
white sugar in our country is from the sugarcane (Chen
et al., 2013). In the processing of refining sugar, the
sugarcane juice squeezed out often has a lot of
suspended solids, in industrial production, suspended Fig. 1: The blade cutting schematic diagram
solids will be removed by means of adding chemical
additives (Zhong et al., 2004). But if the sugarcane there are always curved shapes on it, general blades
surface processing can be done before refining sugar, it cannot apply. So it is necessary to design the blades
can reduce the content of sediment and rocks. It is a according to the characteristics of the sugarcane to meet
good way to reduce the concentration of the suspended the requirements of the sugarcane peeling. In this study,
solids in sugar cane juice, which can reduce the number a kind of blade that its tool rod can be freely adjustable
of adding chemical additives (Zeng, 2011). In the actual was designed to adapt to different radial size and
production, it is often through the sugarcane peeling to bending. The blade cutting schematic diagram is shown
reduce content of sediment and rocks and it also can in Fig. 1, the sugarcane was peeled by eight cutting
increase the quantity of sugarcane juice. blade along the circumferential direction, sugarcane
At present, sugarcane peeling is using artificial way section was positively octagon after cutting.
mostly in our country, the efficiency is low (Lin, 2009). Because that the hardness of sugarcane is large and
It is necessary to design a highly efficient sugarcane not easy to brake, feed part a dopts to the opposite
peeling machine for improving production efficiency vertex rubber wheel as an executive device and servo
and reducing the production cost. In recent years, the motor as a power device.
motion controller with advantages of fast processing
speed and good reliability has been widely used (Wu Structure design:
et al., 2004). In this study, in view of the difficulties in Whole structure: Sugarcane peeling machine is mainly
the process of sugarcane peeling, a sugarcane peeling composed of feed part and cutting part, feeding part is
machine based on motion controller was designed, it is divided into the feeding and discharging two parts.
aimed to make a certain contribution to sugarcane Structure diagram is shown in Fig. 2.
processing.
Feed part: Feed part is mainly composed of servo
THE WORKING PRINCIPLE AND motor, rubber wheel and drive mechanism. When it is
STRUCTURE DESIGN feeding, the rubber wheel is driven by feed servo motor
and the sugarcane is driven by the rubber wheel; when it
The working principle: Sugarcane is different from is discharging after peeling, the rubber wheel is driven
other crops, its radial dimensions can be changed and by discharging servo motor and the sugarcane is also

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (URL: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
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 Adv. J. Food Sci. Technol., 7(10): 824-826, 2015

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

1.Feed motor 2.Feed rubber wheel 3.Blades 4.Storage box

5.Squirrel cage rest 6.Discharging rubber wheel

7.Discharging motor 8.body frame

Fig. 2: Structure diagram

3 4 5
2

1.Servo motor 2.Gear 3.Pulley 1

4.Pulley 2 5.Rubber wheel

Fig. 3: Drive mechanism

driven by the rubber wheel. The sugarcane go forward

by the friction between the rubber wheel and sugarcane.
Sugarcane peeling machine drive mechanism is
shown in Fig. 3, servo motor drive pulley 1 to turn, gear 3
is connected to the pulley, the pulley and gear rotate at 2
the same time, pulley drives rubber wheel to rotate. 1
Through two gears meshing, two rubber wheels reverse
rotate, rubber wheel drive sugarcane to move forward.
The connection between the rubber wheel and body 1.Squirrel cage rest 2.Elastic tool rod
frame is elastic, so that it can adapt to different diameter 3.Blade
of sugarcane. There is equipped with photoelectric
switch before the feed rubber wheel and the discharging Fig. 4: The diagram of cutting part
rubber wheel, when they detect the sugarcane,
photoelectric switch sends signal, servo motor will drive Cutting part: Cutting part adopts squirrel-cage rest, the
the rubber wheel to drive sugarcane. connection of cutting blades and tool rest is same with
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 Adv. J. Food Sci. Technol., 7(10): 824-826, 2015

Put sugarcane into photoelectric switch detects that sugarcane is coming,

the machine manually then it sends a signal to the system, feed servo motor
starts. Feed rubber wheel rotates and drives sugarcane
Photoelectric switch to go forward to the cutting part. Cutting blade will cut
1 open on different positions of the sugarcane in turn,
sugarcane rind falls to the storage box; After peeling,
Feed motor open sugarcane continues to move forward, when
photoelectric switch detects that sugarcane is near the
discharging rubber wheel, it sends a signal to the
Peeling system, discharging servo motor starts, discharge
rubber wheel rotates and drives sugarcane forward until
Photoelectric switch the sugarcane come out of the machine. Sugarcane
2 open peeling machine control flow chart is shown in Fig. 5.
Discharging motor
open Control system design: Motion controller has the
advantages of high control precision, fast reaction speed
and good reliability, it is widely used in recent years
Finish (Wang, 2011). In this study, the motion controller is
served as control core of sugarcane peeling machine
Fig. 5: Control flow chart and photoelectric switch is served as detecting element,
system building is shown in Fig. 6. System I/O
photoele photoele allocation is shown in Table 1. Because that the
ctric ctric installation feed and discharging photoelectric switch is
switch1 switch2 before of rubber wheel, so at the end of a sugar cane
conveying, rubber wheel cannot provide power, this
problem can be solved by taking advantage of time
Motion controller delay process of the motion controller.

CONCLUSION
Dischar
Feed In this study, in view of the difficult in the process
ging
motor of sugarcane peeling, a kind of automatic sugarcane
motor peeling machine based on the motion controller was
designed. It can implements the automation of the
whole process of feeding, peeling and discharging,
Fig. 6: System building
sugarcane peeling machine can replace manual labor,
Table 1: System I/O allocation greatly improve the production efficiency and reduce
Input Output the production cost. It has great significance on
------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------ sugarcane processing.
IN0 IN1 OUT0 OUT1
Feed Discharging Feed servo Discharging REFERENCES
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